The Soup and Sorrow Digest

Hospital Tribulations

Cloudy, chilly, the sky was in want of the barest pinpricks of blue.  Elena pulled her car into a parking spot bordering the hospital grounds. Her eyelashes were gunky with mascara, her hair the black stiff mane of a frazzled Chewbacca. Her lips crimped in show of effort as she pulled the parking brake. She turned excitedly to Ricardo filling the air with the spicy, poisonous smoke of clove cigarettes.

"So ... ok." She kept sleeking back her black hair, which sprung back stubbornly in stiff opposition. "So ... ok. I have to study a little bit. Shit, I need to pass my test this time. No buds. No buds. I have to study (scratching her off-white teeth in the dashboard mirror) Shit, I've to get Amalina a baby shower present ... baby socks ... claro."

Ricardo sucked in deeply. He waited for the smoke to burn in his chest, for Elena's words to form order, or sense, or whatever, he was too concentrated on smoking fashionably like a Frenchman to know. Soon enough, she was waffling about knit one, purl two, and circular needles and triangular needles. He exhaled explosively over the radio relaying, in proper stolid accents, news of the Night Stalker force-feeding his genitals to unlucky women. There was the cut to a commercial break of saxophone harmonies, and then she fell quiet presumably to gather more tumbleweed of words.

"What about studying?" he asked tiredly.

"Hmm. Good point. Good point. fif, what was I thinking? I'm a horrible knitter." Her eyes moved like a metronome flicking a poco a poco. "We have to get her something, anything, or she'll call me a cockroach."

"Didn't she call you a queen spaz or something?"

"Queen rhino." Her voice dropped an octave.

Good one. Ricardo beat on his chest to suppress a titter, but the attempt degenerated into a sick man's coughing fit. "I have to book outta here."

"Wait, when do you want me to pick you up?" she asked.

 "I'll take the bus. I have things to do."

'Things' involved Carlos and his seediness. Ricardo had to pick up a package from Julio and deliver it to Carlos. 'Things' also would have Elena flap in a disturbed haranguing about Carlos, his stupidity and her brother spending ten years in prison for drug dealing, leaving her to fend for herself in the wilds of junior college. Rashly, Ricardo, avoiding her iridescently dilated eyes, reached over to the ashtray, and stubbed out the cigarette in a precise rhythmic manner. She fell quiet again. The smog-scented breeze mingling with the tobacco smell. The same stolid commentator from the radio now opining of Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power.

Ricardo looked up to her viscid pink lips and worried a little. "I'll be back before dark."

"You promise?"

"Claro." Smiling, he ruffled her bare shoulder. Her hair gave a slight crunch. "The buds' turning you into a scaredy cat."

Her bony fingers ratcheted around the leather grip of the steering wheel. Ricardo knocked back a smile and insisted, "I'll be back before dark."

Her face perked up then flattened into a look of obsequious want. "Bob has a dinner party this evening-"