Category: Fiction
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In Aristotle’s footsteps
Henri Colt Laguna Beach, California, United States Photo by Gianluca Cinnante on Unsplash. Squatting on a cement slab, the old doctor watched sea urchins bristle their spines in clear Aegean waters. His short brown tunic covered shoulders broad as an oxen’s chest. He flexed his tanned, muscular forearms and clenched his fists, then rolled…
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Aunty Felicia
Boma Somiari Port Harcourt, Nigeria Photo by Liza Summer from Pexels I can’t stand blood. So my goal was to stay as far as I could from hospitals and all they come with. But then change came to me when Aunty Felicia came to my village with a missionary organization that chose medicine and…
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Business as usual
David Blitzer New York, New York, United States Inauguración del Hospital Municipal de Chiconcuac. 2016. Photo by Presidencia de la República Mexicana. Via Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Clarissa Myers arrived at the hospital at the usual time on Monday morning. She walked past her assistant, strode into her office, and sat at her desk,…
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Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, and Moses
Faraze A. Niazi Jack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Harriet Tubman 1822 – 1913 Slave, abolitionist, activist. Suggested to have had visions and dreams as manifestations of temporal lobe epilepsy. Via the Library of Congress. Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, reveal myself to them in visions,…
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The deer trail
Henri Colt Laguna Beach, California, United States Photo by Kevin Mueller on Unsplash “Ezra, get up! It’s a beautiful morning, and you’re sixteen today!” I playfully shook my son’s shoulder. “It’s six o’clock, Dad, what are you doing?” He buried his head under his pillow and slid under the covers. “We’re going hiking, remember?”…
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An unseen border
T.Y. Euliano Gainesville, Florida, United States Eyes of the Master. Photo by Steve Robicsek, MD/PhD. 11/6/2004. Permission granted by the artist. “Please let me have the chest pain in 3,” I said. “I can’t take any more whiny kids today.” Clare raised an eyebrow. “You can have the next trauma.” “Two traumas,” she said.…
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Up north
Richard Bentley Amherst, Massachusetts, United States Lake Michigan. Photo by Qfamily on Flickr. July 15, 2006. CC BY 2.0. He had come to Northern Michigan, and the lake gulls were shrieking at him. He had been on vacation only two days, but he sat around the cabin, springing up now and then to go…
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How to save a life
Sam Campbell Moh’D Ibrahim Johnson City, Tennessee, United States “We had been happy together, though it took years to convince her family to allow us to marry.” My wife is in Texas, threatening to file divorce papers. I am here, 996 miles away, trying to find Mrs. Smith who has wandered out of her…
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A form of pain
Ifediba Nzube Port Harcourt, Nigeria Èsù the trickster by Onyeji Prince. For Yewande, pain is Èsù slapping her head like a bata drum. But no one sees that; they see only a tumor pushing out her left eye, up her palate, and through her nostrils. Most days she smells like meat gone green. The…