Thursday 2 November 2017

She Didn't Need It Anyway. By Maeve Kousiakis.

Prompt: She never needed it anyway.
Genre: Drama
Word count: 300


She repeated it again to herself.

“Check in with the nurse at reception. Find a chair against a wall. Take out the documents. Put them under my shirt. Put the gun in my mouth – pointing upwards. Pow.” She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Vanessa got out of the car in the dark parking lot and made her way to the doors of the emergency room. She could feel the gun, like a comforting weight, grounding her to calmness. Relative to its size, it was ridiculously heavy in her handbag.

“How long to see the doctor?” she asked the receptionist.

“Ten minutes. Kindly fill in the form and take a seat.” replied the receptionist.

It was Friday morning, 9am. The hospital’s emergency waiting room was empty, just as planned. She handed the forms back and found a seat with her back to the wall. She took out Ashleigh’s photo with the note on the back.

“My darling Ash,

It is so wasted on me, this heart. The meds have no effect at all in fending off the darkness inside me these days. It would seem the soul purpose of my place on this planet was to grow you a proper, working heart. A bit of me will be in you forever now, beating life through your veins. May it serve you as well as it has me.

All my love forever, Aunty Van.”

She took out the papers and tucked them under her shirt with the photo. Safe from the impending fluid explosion inside a Ziploc bag, they detailed in heavy legal jargon, her compatible blood group and request for her heart to go to her niece.


Taking out the gun, she positioned it in her mouth, pointed it up, breathed in, and pulled the trigger.