I’ll be Waiting

This story is from my dream last night…..

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The twins walked through the alley with the bag of shopping they had just purchased from the store.  Edith, slender and dark, her brother tall, handsome and sullen.  Edith was trying to tell her brother about an event earlier that day but he wasn’t listening.  She could tell he was already out with his friends in his mind and would leave to be with them as soon as he’d walked her home.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement.  The hairs stood up on the back of her neck just as two large teens, dressed in black, stepped out in front of her and Lee.  She saw them sneering as, without a word, they pulled out flick knives and advanced.

Racism since Brexit’ was rife on the streets and every day the twins life was made a misery by torrents of abuse their way. Hence Lee having to walk with Edith at their mothers insistence, even though Edith had assured her she would be just fine alone.

Edith smiled at Lee, who grinned back and winked.  The two teens sneers dropped a little and they glanced at each other with a look of puzzlement.  The smallest of the two snarled then, like a feral animal and lunged at Edith. She gently stepped away, grabbing his arm and twisting it around as she moved around in a circular move, ending behind him.  As she did the knife slid across the boys leg, leaving a gaping wound. She twisted his arm up and around behind his back.  The knife clattered to the floor and she grabbed it as she toppled him into the garbage bags at the alley’s edge.  She spun around to catch sight of Lee disclocate the other boys arm.  With that boy screaming in the garbage bags to the other side, his knife safe in Lee’s hand, the twins walked home.

Lee shouted through to his Mum As he left the house to meet his friends at the club . He waved at Edith who was sitting in the kitchen doing some reading.  Take care, she silently mouthed at him . Always, he mouthed back and left.

Several months later Edith and Lee had left college.  They had also left home, Lee off to University in Hull, and Edith starting her training as a nurse . Long hours, lessons, blood, gore and the horror at her first death had turned her from a young compassionate teenager into a compassionate and determined young woman on a mission . She decided to train as a doctor instead of a nurse, and started putting in even longer hours studying.  She had almost stopped having a social life at all until a young doctor had accosted her at the canteen one day and asked her on a date.  He was tall, handsome but white.  She had made excuses after excuses but he wore her down and soon they were known as an item.  Lee, who she had thought would be furious, loved Wayne as a brother when they met and he’d introduced them to Maggie, a gorgeous redhead, with all four having tons of fun at every moment they could meet up.

Edith passed her exams.  She didn’t get top marks but she had made it through and was now a junior doctor on her first week on the Accident and Emergency Department.  The first few days were a blur of questions, decisions, mentoring by her Registrar, a gently spoken man only a few years older than her.  He’d held her when her first death as a doctor occured. Patted her back when she was unsure, and praised her highly when she made a good call of judgement.

Thursday night she had been able to have off. Time off was rare and it coincided with Wayne’s so they’d grabbed a bottle of wine and a takeaway, curled up on the sofa with a tearjerker and then gone to bed, with the wine.

She woke Friday morning to find him in the kitchen, preparing eggs on toast, the only meal he actually knew how to cook without burning. Wearing only an apron. She watched him dish it up, and smiled,  slipping into his arms and pressing her ear against his chest.

He laughed and asked her what she was doing.  Listening to your heart, she responded . It proves you’re real and alive and not just a dream.

She dressed after breakfast and kissed him at the door.  He had Friday off also and aimed to just relax that day. I love you, he mouthed silently as she stood at the gate looking back.  I love you too, she mouthed back.

‘I’ll be home about 7…hopefully’ she called as she walked off.

‘I’ll be waiting’ he called back..not sure if she heard him or not.

Her morning in the department was busy as normal, a small boy stuck his hand in a pipe and an elderly man didn’t have time to say goodbye to his wife waiting outside as he gasped his last breath.

Edith was about to take a break when a call came out that a stab victim was being rushed in and she flew into trauma mode instead.  As the victim came in she had a flutter of recognition but couldn’t place him until a voice behind her made her spin around…

‘If it isn’t the black bitch.  What a fucking surprise!’

Staring at her with a mean grin on his face was one of the boys from the alley.  She looked at the man on the trolley and knew him as the other.

‘I knew we’d meet again you cow’, snarled the man and then brushed past her as the emergency team flew into action .

Her nerves heightened, she still managed to finish her day out after saving the stab victims life,  and headed out on the short walk home .

She didn’t hear him until he’d already pushed the knife home in her back.  He twisted it as she crumpled to the pavement. She lifted her arm towards her home and Wayne, as the man’s footsteps faded away.

With her heartbeat pounding in her ears, she mouthed,  i’m real and alive.  I’ll be waiting, before dying where she lay.

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