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Snow Angel by Steve Goodlad

29/3/2021

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We weren’t allowed to visit until your last day when we crept into the hospital like disguised fugitives and were shown your shrunken form that we hardly recognised. Your heavy-lidded eyes barely flickered as we held your hand and spoke useless words of comfort, willing you to go, to no longer prolong your pain, willing you to stay so that we could take you home.
 
For weeks we had waited, watching your texts diminish, then the calls from the exhausted nurses reading from notes and emotionless scripts, rehearsed with other patients who had already passed. Then the last one suggested we drop everything.
 
We stood above you in our layers of PPE and scrubs, like clinical aliens watching you try to breathe your last, performing our eleventh-hour duty, squirming like children desperate to go out and play, to be anywhere but there facing the reality.
 
One of us must have carried the virus over the threshold, carried it unseen like an innocent drug mule and smeared it on a shared surface. The one who took home the shopping? The one who took their children to the play-park? Took the bins out? It no longer matters.
 
We wanted to take you home. We could have borne you on the sledge, like a snow queen
one last ski run, one last snowball fight. With anything else it might have been possible. One last goodnight.
 
We trudged through the snow in silence until he suggested we went to the park. We lay in the soft powdery snow and I imagined you with us, like when we were children, making snow angels and everywhere the ice-crusted fringes of tree tops, the glint of winter sun, the dazzling light. “If you had to go” I spoke aloud, “I hoped you would die this way”.
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    Issue 10 & 11

    March 2021


    The Stories

    All
    A Flawless Defense By C.E. Tidswell
    A Mother's Love By Jo Winwood
    And Chaos Ensued By Hilary Taylor
    An Emperor By Felicity Edwards
    Another Chance By Jeff Jones
    A Ritual By Victoria Kuzmina
    A Sociologist On Brick Lane By R.T. Hardwick
    Blessed By Amy Harte
    Blood Is Thicker Than Water By Cindy Periera
    Date Night By Caitlin M Kearns
    Drama Queen By Elaine Peters
    Dying With A View By Felicity Edwards
    Flirting With Benefits By Hilary Taylor
    For Better
    For Worse By Liz Berg
    Getting Lost By Liz O'Shea
    Inaction Speaks Louder By Rachel Smith
    Justice In A Kidney Tray By Cindy Pereira
    Lost By Steve Goodlad
    Married In D Minor By Ryan Coull
    Mary And The Spirit By Graham Crisp
    Midday
    Officially Dead By Emily Dixon
    Pope Urban By Stephen Lisle
    Race Ya By James Northern
    Say Cheese By Steve Stucko
    Short Changed By Liz Berg
    Snow Angel By Steve Goodlad
    Soap By Gilles Talarek
    The Affair By Graham Crisp
    The Barista Of Verona By Steve Goodlad
    The Beacon On The Shore By Darren Arthurs
    The Doctor’s Peculiar Boy By Katrina Hayes
    The French Connection By R.T. Hardwick
    The Night Cleaner By Darren Arthurs
    The Right Place By Sven Camrath
    The Shopping Trip By Hilary Taylor
    The Suicide Tree By Beverley Byrne
    The Vaccination Centre Volunteer By Steve Goodlad
    Thursday By Darren Arthurs
    ‘Tis Goodbye By Hilary Taylor
    Wrong Number By Rachel Smith


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Secret Attic - Founded March 2020