Good News
By Eliana Megerman
The splatter of her blood on the surgeon’s sky-blue scrub top looked fresh, and for the rest of his life, David Henry’s every day would be stained by that morning. Crumpled as she’d been, the tire track marks across her tiny body, as he’d scooped her up and run. The blur of the events would play on rewind in his brain, but it happened so fast that he couldn’t pick out specific details.
Good friends had been helping them with their move, the four of them lugging boxes in and out, in and out. They never did discover how she got to the bottom of the driveway without anyone noticing. Years later, when cameras came standard in cars, when you didn’t even have to turn your head to see what was behind you as you reversed, he would feel a sinking weight in his gut every time he looked at the screen. With these special cameras, their friend never could have backed over her.
As he saw the surgeon finally approaching that morning, his heart’s last ember of hope sputtered. A lifetime had passed for them as they waited and David Henry knew by the look on the surgeon’s face, by his downcast eyes, by his slower stride, he would not share good news.
THE END
Author Bio: Eliana Megerman is an emergency medicine physician and writer. She leaves the knife fights and heart attacks behind to write novels and stories between shifts. She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. Her stories have appeared in Does It Have Pockets magazine and are slated to appear in Flash Fiction and Macrame magazines in the spring.