The day was bitingly cold, and Sarah couldn’t get over this cough.  It clawed at her lungs like an angry cat, and made her whole body shudder with pain after a real bad fit. No matter what she did, whether it be downing a cough drop or sipping hot soup, the tickle in her throat and the cold in her chest would not subside.

Finally, Sarah took the long trip to the doctor.  She started the car, toured the highway, and waited impatiently for her exam, hacking all the way.  The room in which she waited was cold, too, just like everywhere else, and made her shiver. Not only was it cold, but crowded.  A pimply-faced adolescent beside Sarah snapped his gum obnoxiously and plugged his ears with the rubbery tail of an iPod. His worry-stricken mother across from him pinched her eyebrows together and held her lime green handbag in a vice-like grip.  Her husband beside her bounced his knobbly knees in a leisurely way, absent mindedly humming and stroking his wife’s hand.  He leaned over and whispered something in her ear, a twinkle lighting his eye and a sleepy smile lifting his cheeks.  The woman’s deep wrinkles of concern shallowed as her face loosened; her frown became a girlish grin and she looked years younger.  The couple shared a kiss(arousing a disgusted protest from their son).  Sarah merely looked down and fiddled with her wedding band.

“Sarah McKonnor?”  called a hollow-sounding voice from the receptionist with the phone in her ear, nose-deep in her computer screen.  Sarah stood and made her way through the aisles of chairs and toward the office door, doing her best not to trip over the fellow-patient feet draped across her path. (more…)