ENG 332: Story #3 Opening w. POV IV

Third Person ala Jane Austin

White. Bleached. Sterilized. Washed. White. The hospital room, like many and almost all hospital rooms, brought to mind insane asylums and made the patients and those who came to visit them question their sanity. Seth was no different, neither was Micheal but he was asleep and as such need not deal with it.

Seth stood out the window, looking down to see his car and the dent on the left side door but as he was on the tenth floor, there was no conceivable way to actually make it out. He was a man who never overlooked mistakes but rather expanded them, made them worst because it was his belief they should have never happened to begin with. Micheal was the exact opposite but he had no say in how his brother worked, especially now that he was catatonic.

Today was the seventh day of Micheal’s stay in St. Vincent’s Hospital. He was under a medical cocktail meant to rearrange the chemicals in his system damaged by the heavy methamphetamine use. His brother, as only living relative within an eight-state radius had been with him since, leaving only to go home and shower away the grime and guilt that collected. Safe to say the latter could not be relieved, no matter how much one would lather.

While Seth was strolling along memory lane, good or bad but mostly bad, he played with a lighter in his pocket. It was a simple nicotine fidget he’d suffer from when he wasn’t allotted his cigarette of the day despite him having a perfectly unopened package sitting in the window ledge for about the third day. It was at that moment, somewhere amongst the images of a smiling Joseph Wheeler, that nurse Margaret James came into the room, beginning her rounds for this afternoon.

She was forty-three with a twenty-year stint at St. Vincent’s and a thirty-year-old look. She read Micheal’s chart and inwardly sighed. She had a soft spot for drug addicts as her own, now dead son was a renowned heroine addict. With all the motherly affection of Theresa herself, she approached Micheal and went about clearing his face of stray strands of hair. She’d seen Seth upon his arrival the first night he admitted his brother and now looking at Michael found the resemble between the two as quite strong.

“ He looks just like you.”