Skinny • Book 1 In The Reality Series

Wilma (a doctor)

I don't like cigarettes.

My girlfriend hates them.

I only smoke them on bad days.

Dead baby? Cigarette.

Momless kids and widowed husband? Cigarette.

Kids that remind me of my dead daughter? Cigarette.

My white coat folded over my arm I take a long drag of the death stick held in my cracked over washed hands.

It was a good day today. Slow. No one died, no one came in hideously disfigured. No babies were lost.

And then the ambulance came unloading a zombie looking boy and his crying, mid panic attack sister.

"Shit." I'd muttered, realizing that I'd have to pitch my Panera.

I think the girl heard me say shit.

That made me feel bad so I told the fresh out of college ditz who ran the front desk like a country to go comfort her.

I almost felt worse doing that, knowing that the girl didn't want an awkward back pay from a stranger, lukewarm coffee and a package of those gross, orange crackers with what's supposed to be peanut butter on image inside.

I tap the ash from the end of my cigarette, making sure it doesn't get on my shoes. I love my shoes.

Returning the cigarette to my mouth I wonder if the kid will make it. It's a fifty, fifty. Sixty forty if we're being honest but I'm trying to be optimistic.

"Bad day?" A maintenance man joining me for a cigarette ponders.

I nod.

"Dead kid?"

"Could go either way."

"Those are the worst."

I nod.

"I was a doctor in my country. Telling the relatives is the worst part."

"Tell me about it."

"Good luck."

"Thanks, I need it."

Extinguishing my cigarette I drop it at my feet. My mind stuck on the boy at the end of the road. The boy that made it a cigarette kind of day.