Friday Excerpt: On Saturday Afternoon

Time is going by so quickly and I frequently forget when it’s Friday! I apologize for the weeks I miss. Today’s excerpt is from my short story On Saturday Afternoon. It is available in my first Dev Dreams collection, but the reason I’m sharing a part of it today is that it is also in a new anthology that just came out called Accessible Love Stories. It’s on Kindle and will be out in paperback soon. All the stories are from different authors and each one has at least one character in a wheelchair.

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The hallways were empty and Em had no idea how to find him. Her voice was too soft to call for him. She kept a hand against one wall as she slowly walked from one end to the other, stopping abruptly at a painting hanging at the end of the hall. She crossed to the other side and began walking back the other way. What was she doing? Why wasn’t she just going home? Her stomach clenched at the thought of returning to her little apartment, her schoolwork, her boyfriend. She kept pacing the hall until an attendant walked by.

“Excuse me?” Em said. She had to repeat it twice before the attendant noticed her. “Do you know where I can find James?”

The man pointed and said, “Room 304.”

Em followed where he had shown and gently pushed open the door, stepping into the room. There were two beds: an old man on one and James on the other. He was wearing blue pajamas and his wheelchair was empty beside him. He didn’t see her right away, as he was looking over at the other man and gesturing his wrist at the basketball game on the television.

“Hi,” Em said softly. James turned his head to the door and his face dropped. She had never seen him look so serious. “What are you doing here?” he said.

She hated that he looked at her and seemed upset. “I don’t know,” she whispered, “I just, I wanted to see you.”

“Now you see me,” he said and his voice was frighteningly still.

There was a question on her face that she was afraid to ask. He answered it anyway, “I live here. You’re a PT student; you have to know that I need care.”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Well, now you know.”

Fear was racing up and down Em’s veins and words were becoming jumbled in her head. She didn’t know how to tell him that it was fine, that it didn’t bother her to know that he lived in a nursing home. This wasn’t her familiar James. She wanted him back.