Summary Of ' The Meadow '

Jenna’s head throbbed, her eyes were hazy, she blinked struggling to make out her surroundings. She became conscious of a wetness on my arms and torso. Craning her head downwards she acknowledged the pool of crimson blood seeping from her forearms. The memory of drawing those thin lines replayed within her head, the distraction of the physical pain from the psychological battle. Having awoken from fainting after a loss of blood she felt faint and dizzy.

“Demaris was shot.” He stopped. “I’m sorry.” Then he left without saying anything else. After we heard the slam of the door, I fell to the ground. My mother and I laid there the rest of the night and cried ourselves to sleep.

"A dollhouse," Leo recited, after a winding autumn breeze. Her voice was flat and quiet, still trapped in the memory. "I loved it very much." Like usual, Benson pressed her for details, but the woman was as deep in her memories as she was willing to go. Any further was dangerous. In fact, apparently, this far was dangerous, and she wasn't even ankle deep.

Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, 7-year-old me swung my feet back and forth under the generic, time-worn furniture and anxiously wrung my sweaty palms. I’d been to the doctor’s before, but with each returning yearly visit the dread that sunk to the bottom of my gut never shrunk. “Jillianne Carrasco?” The nurse called. My stomach turned. I began to shoot my mother a pleading look, but she wasted no time in grabbing my hand and leading me to the smiling nurse waiting at the door, and we both followed her through the pasty white halls to a customary exam room. The nurse closed the door behind us and asked me to take a seat on the crinkly tissue paper cot. She smiled warmly, likely taking note of my nervous breathing and shaky hands.

“Hey Jack” Jack was back but how that fast? “ Hello how did you sleep last night?” she questioned “I heard shuffling when I passed your room last night” A concerned look passed her face. I wish I could tell her, but I couldn’t “ Oh just the usual nightmares.” I replied everything was still racing through my mind it was hard to even answer and even to look at her without lying spelled across my face.

The nurses were required to attend to the personal needs of the patients by asking if they want to use the bathroom or bedpan and any other needs that the patients want to be attended to. In addition to the above, the nurses check position and ask patients if there is anything he or she could do to make his or her positioning comfortable. These include identification of risks for skin breakdown and attending to such risks by providing hygiene and skin care.

The nurse’s tired but peppy voice cuts through your confusing thoughts, and as you get settled in your new bed she is jabbering on about the bathroom, the bed, the morning, and your new roommate who will be arriving shortly, so be polite and nice and don’t ask too many questions. Her words are a silly blend of vowels and consonants, which you’re jealous of. She leaves and you yank the coarse blanket up to your chin, shivering. You fall asleep in the fetal position, cold and defeated and

Denny O’Callaghan woke to see bloodstains on his pillow, his bedsheets. He closed his eyes, groaned and rolled over. Maybe, he figured, he could fall back asleep. Blot out of his mind what he’d just seen. But the back of his head throbbed. He touched it and felt a bump the size of an egg, and his hair was sticky and matted there. His throat was so dry. He coughed. Blurry memories, specters nearly, from the night before flitted about in his mind’s eye. Vaguely shifting images. Incomplete. He’d been drinking tequila shots with the guys from the firehouse. Yelling. And then—nothing. He hoped if he kept his eyes closed long enough, maybe it would all go away.

Tizbeth laid there on her back with her arm over her eyes. Her mind told her to leave. Her body told her she was dying. She closed her eyes; she may have passed out. She dreamed of being in her heat forge and someone, a man, told her she was doing a good job. She ran her hand over the braided love knot pedant. Although unrefreshed when she opened her eyes, Tizbeth rolled on her stomach, crawl toward the stairs and

“Wait, what’s happening?” she asked. The man in the tuxedo left, leaving the nurse in there with her.

As I listened for the constant scuffling of rats scampering around in the rusty pipes, I tried counting to ten. In the darkness, I went in and out of consciousness, images of my mother and father replaying behind my lids. After a while, I drifted off to a half-conscious sleep riddled with jolts of fear and pangs of hunger. I could no longer close my eyes without seeing the nightmares that have plagued me since I was young.

I left my car and walked towards the staff entrance, waving at some nurses who were just finishing their shifts. It was a cold and gloomy day, but the welcoming heat from the front corridor made my muscles relax. Momentarily after gathering my belongings—lab coat, name tag and clipboard—I made my way down the long, narrow hallway towards the introductory interview room. I knew my patient would be waiting.

She was so nervous, scared, she just wanted to go to her room, listen to music, read, she wanted to be anywhere, except there, in this Doctor's office, which now looked smaller, ugly, creepy and dirty.

The bed beneath her creaks when she rolls over, facing the bars that trap her in here. She starts to imagine many things that could happen because after staring at grey concrete walls and grey ceiling for a while, your mind starts conjuring things up to keep itself occupied. She's already tried thinking of how she got her and every single scenario but is no

“No,” I whispered, my hands coming to my mouth. My mother's body. My poor, beautiful, mother, who was unjustly raped then burned, haunted my dreams most nights. I would wake up in cold sweat, tears streaming down my cheeks, but this wasn't a dream. I couldn't wake up.