A Day in the Night at Bellevue Hospital

by Patrick Pomeroy 

She escaped Bellevue Hospital’s office for Social Security Income
in a winter dark only a cat-fight might know. 

Being inside all day  she sometimes became static as if cotton was stuffed in her ears  and cucumber slices  placed on her closed eye lids just like she did on Sunday mornings. 

A hundred different faces lining down the stained hallway like a painter’s pre-arranged color scheme. She thought of central casting and musing gently, she smiled to herself. 

A feeling returned. The one she knew too well. The same one that
makes a super-tanker cry and groan to the stars as it goes down, its
propellers still whirring dutifully. 

Maybe she could turn her mother’s brownstone into a free food co-op.
What about performing appendectomies?
Becoming a midwife? 

Drops of strange briny tasting liquid snaked down her cheeks, puddled briefly at the corners of her mouth, then escaped from her chin down her neck.
Crestfallen