Sunday, May 28, 2006

Sneak Preview II

Here's the next section of the story I've been working on. I've titled it "The Beginning of Everything." Feedback would be cool, if you've got some.

    There was this woman, Sheila, and she was diagnosed with cancer. She worked in research, so I never saw her very often because her door was always closed. We’d see each other sometimes in the ladies’, but you can’t really talk in the ladies’. Or, rather, people shouldn’t talk in the ladies’. It’s frustrating, because I’m a talker, I like to talk, I like talking to people, and I don’t like talking in the ladies’, but then so many of the gals at work seem to want to have these tantalizingly short conversations in there, and I can’t really participate because. I just don’t want to talk to people while I’m, you know.

    People always checked on Sheila after her diagnosis. You’d hear them in the restroom: “How are you?” And that emphasized “you” meant so many other things than just how Sheila was right at that moment. They wanted to know all about Sheila, and they seemed greedy; they wanted to be the person showing Sheila the most empathy and the most concern. Sheila didn’t seem to care, though, that they were leeching off of her diagnosis. Sheila would smile and say, “Fine, thanks.” But not in a curt way. She really meant it. If I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, I’ll say “fine, thanks” the same way that Sheila did.

    Sheila died. That would be one reason why I wouldn’t necessarily want to be diagnosed with cancer the way that she was. And it was really frustrating, because to be honest, I got a little tired of all the attention everyone paid to Sheila. For instance, Craig brought in some candles his partner Mike made, aromatherapy candles he called them, to help calm Sheila down, he said, and it’s not like Sheila was suffering from nerves; she had cancer. And with Sheila out so much, what with going to the doctors and the chemo, I had to pick up some of her slack even though I’m in marketing and she’s in research, and with all that extra work I’m really the one who needed some soothing candles to help with stress. I had even hinted around many times when Craig had brought in those candles, how they were awfully pretty and they smelled fantastic and that it would be nice to have a couple on my desk because it can get a little stale smelling in there late in the afternoon; our windows don’t open. And then, when Craig got my name for the Secret Santa, I thought for sure he’d give me some of those candles. He got me Dilbert stationery instead, and I don’t even like Dilbert. Is it supposed to be funny? Because I don’t get it.

    Sheila died, and it was like she never died, because no one seemed to be moving on because even though she wasn’t there, everyone still asked, “How are you?” “How are you?” Which would make sense if the people asking were asking other people with cancer, but they weren’t. Scott didn’t have cancer, even with all those moles he has, yet because he sat in the office next to Sheila’s, everyone really seemed to care about how Scott was doing. And Scott was fine; we were all fine. I was fine, but nobody asked me “How are you?” so I couldn’t tell anyone. But they’d ask each other because they couldn’t ask Sheila, I mean they could ask Sheila but that would be pretty weird. After my mom had her stroke she’d stand in the kitchen and talk to my stepdad who’d died a couple years earlier.

    I didn’t realize so many people knew Sheila because like I said, she worked in research and her door was always closed, but I saw a lot of people really weepy around the office. We even closed for her memorial service. I went, but I left early, because it was a Friday and I didn’t want to get caught in traffic. Besides, it seemed like everyone only cared about how people who knew Sheila were doing, and I didn’t know her all that well because her door was always closed and I didn’t want to chat her up in the ladies’ room, but if someone had asked me how I was, I’d have told them. It would have been nice. “I’m hanging in there,” I would have said. “Each day is a little easier than the one before.”

1 Comments:

Blogger kdmacken said...

Love it. I love your writing style. And I love your hang of people.

11:04 PM  

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