Short Stories of a Star-bound Samaritan

Late Night; Early Morning

She entered the cold, sterile doors, taking a seat by a plastic plant and a side table with various magazines stacked atop it. Her soft eyes quickly scanned the room as if to make note of any peculiar faces. She takes notice of a man who in any other situation, would be considered a freak. And yet, in this room, he is perfectly dressed. He is wearing long-sleeves and trousers with a face mask and rubber gloves. To the untrained eye, it might seem like this man is carrying a deadly illness, and he is, but not in the way they think. Still in her seat by the plastic plant, leaning her neck into the back of the armchair, she puts on her wired headphones, taking in the beauty of the melodic music humming into her eager ears. She makes a grab at the assortment of magazines beside her taking the one at the very top. Her calloused, textured, ill-manicured fingers turn the pages of the fashion magazine she is reading: she would be here for a while and had better get comfortable.

Sounds and smells of sterile smiles infuse the nostrils of the young lady, illuminating her senses as if to make her very much aware of her location, as if she had not yet noticed. After finishing the fashion magazine, or rather skimming through it, her eyes darted towards the television mounted on the pale blue walls. A stimulating show in which a middle-aged woman is demonstrating how to cook a rotisserie chicken with a side of mashed potatoes. As she is watching the show, she unintentionally overhears a phone conversation from the person across from her. He is an adult male in his late thirties, or early forties, his head showing signs of balding. To his left is a bubbly toddler who is otherwise engrossed in a rose-colored tablet. She has two pigtails and is awkwardly sprawled over the pleather chair.

"Hello? Yes, this is he. I am currently unavailable. When would be a suitable time to meet and go over these points?" The eavesdropper carefully analyzes every word, wondering what the context of this conversation could be. Work? Accountant? She had no idea, not yet anyway, but she would soon. People-watching is a fun game she likes to play when bored, listening in on other people's conversations and fully immersing herself in their affairs. Eventually, they would reveal themselves, as they always do. Like a spider in a carefully woven web, all she had to do was wait.

"Daddy, how much longer?" whines the little girl, her face pouting. How impatient we are in our youth, she thinks, which drives her to ponder when the switch happened. As she coldly recalls her rambunctious callowness, never to Heaven and yet lost somewhere in the mystical vastness of the clouds. As if it has no business ascending beyond, sky-locked, a barrier separating the old versions of themselves from the afterlife. Should our previous selves be laid to rest and be at peace or should they remain lifeless wanderers, overcome with wanderlust? What unsettling thoughts, she monologues, proceeding to inadvertently assess the warm bodies that temporarily share the same air with her. Snapping out of her mindless daze, she diverts her attention back to the persons of interest. The man does not address her via words but instead raises his hand as if to say stop now. He then returned to his phone call. Judging by her impending scowl, she is quite simply not having it. She picks up her pink tablet, undoubtedly irritated, but seems to know better than to cause a scene: this surprises her. She supposes that today's children are far more evolved than yesterdays'.

"Yes, Thursday afternoon should work just fine. See you then, bye." And with that closing remark, the man hangs up the phone and turns to his daughter. "We shouldn't be waiting for too much longer, maybe five minutes." Another wave of shock hits her. It was her understanding that the father was dismissive towards his child and their family dynamic to be defective, but he just proved her wrong; she could be every now and then.

Returning her eyes to the angled television, the same middle-aged woman is exemplifying how to make cherry cobbler. Chicken, potatoes, and cobbler? What an odd combination of foods for a meal, she ponders. Her eyes shift to the presumed couple to the right of her. A man and a woman, wearing color coordinating outfits, simple but effective. Inconspicuously she studies them, but they do not talk, their hands intertwined as they are captivated by different things. The man is scrolling through his phone on a form of social media or an eBook, she presumes. While the woman watches the television, paying close attention and typing on her cellphone, noting the recipe. All that she felt in her bones was bitterness, the idea of two people being close to each other while never saying a word was something she relished in. It was one of her goals in life to find someone whom she could purely crack open a weathered piece of literature in utter silence and still feel convolute. A relation beyond words, a spiritual one, where the mind and heart of one body are in perfect sync with the other set, she sighs audibly, unknowingly acquiring the awareness of the individual left of her.