Description
Survival Games
Something about the way the medics scrunch in closer to the screen, pressing keys, checking, rechecking, that makes her curve her hands around the rising moon of her belly, her head turned towards them, watching, as she lies on the sterile plinth. A look passes between them before they return to the monitor, type in more details. Looking for a different answer? Click. Heads lice-tight together, they wait for a response, an edge to their shoulders that indicates something is not quite right. That the picture in front of them is not supposed to look like this. A shaking of heads, a finger urgently pressed to the red alert on the desk and within seconds a senior medic comes pushing through the steel doors. They close their huddle around the machine in a business of grey uniforms. One points. Another mirrors it. All wrap themselves in their whisper. Within their sibilance she can make out words like ‘Definitely’ and ‘No doubt’ before they straighten themselves up and in a trinity of interrogation, step over to the side of her bed. The monitor goes blip, blipblip, bleeeep. ‘You have broken the law.’ ‘What?’ ‘Coupled with a salt-panner,’ they reply.
Geraldine Mills