tobsha Learner

Another Way of Looking at Flesh

She looks down at her book; the movement of the train is making the words jolt sideways in a hypnotic dance. She likes it, it stops her thinking and the book is just a prop anyhow. It’s the last train to her apartment, the latest she can take and she has chosen it especially. The carriage is empty, this is the hollowness she seeks, the roar of the train as it rushes down the tunnel, like blood through a vein, life, time, the future moving forward. This is the obliteration she needs in this moment. She looks down at her hands. One rests palm up between the pages, along the spine of the cheap paperback. The other, fingers curled, holds open the page. An hour ago these fingers were inside a man trying to stem an internal hemorrhage, a calculated gamble her other colleagues had refused. The gamble had failed. The patient had died before gaining consciousness.