To get to the waiting room, patients parked at the building's rear and entered through a metal door with scabs of rust perforating its edges. Inside, arrows led them down a hall and into a room with fifteen chairs and a blaring television. A nurse stopped by every ten minutes to check for new arrivals, handing out clipboards stacked with forms and assigning numbers. So far the doctor had called #1 through #6, meaning it might be hours before she called #12 and #13.
#12 wore tight jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with a designer's name stitched across the breast. Her sunglasses lay on her lap. The television told her she had gonorrhea and that the bacteria was spreading through her blood to her fetus. #12 didn't think she was pregnant but she watched the screen anyway, and after twelve photographs of leaky penises and sixteen of deformed babies, she felt her stomach turn. The floor was white linoleum tile.
These first two paragraphs of "The Safest Place You've Ever Been" by Lucas Southworth can be found within willow springs issue 62 (fall 2008). Within them we get a hint of the story to come, more than enough of that hint to get me to want to read the rest.
As noted, the patients in this waiting room are identified by numbers, and not their names. This is consistent even beyond the walls of the waiting room, as #'s 12 and 13 enter into a relationship upon leaving the building. The bits and pieces of very specific information, such as "Her sunglasses lay on her lap." and "The floor was white linoleum tile." also continue throughout the story. The first time I read the story, I'm not fully sure that I found all of these pieces of information necessary, but within my second reading I decided that they were definitely adding to my understanding of the characters, of the places they were, and the actions they were undertaking. Southworth's inclusion of them seems to me a very subtle addition that really makes the story a better one.
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