Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Vigil in the Night...

The familiar shades of black and white...
A hospital...
at night...
in the isolation wing....
a young nurse fights to keep life in a small pox victim.
The victim is a boy, possibly 7 more likely 5....
Other children watch the drama...
the fight for life...
There are 20 children in all...
but the nineteen lives saved will seem insignificant if there is one fatality.
The Thermometer reads 102*...
She changes the icy cold cloths....
104*.....
She enjects him with medicine...
106*....
she heads for another cloth...
and the boy's chest stills.....
She will not lose this child...
the oxygen tanks are deplated from saving other lives that day...
so she uses her own breathe to force life back into the boy....
...and when the sun rises she carries a living boy to the window to wave at his anguished parents.

4 comments:

Katie said...

WOW!! Where did you find that? I thought about crying...

Anonymous said...

What is this from?

Lady Dvora said...

It's an old black and white movie called Vigil in the Night. I only saw the end, but it was such a gripping scene...I wanted to write about it.

Doug P. Baker said...

Hey Lady Dvora,

Are you or your friends up for a challenge? I am asking everyone to write a sonnet and send it to me. I'll post them all on 11/12. Just go to my blog and scroll down to the one called "A Challenge."

I've enjoyed your writing on here (especially the part about the books), I'll bet you could make a sonnet if you decided to.