A Tiger’s Tale SHORT STORY
by P.A. Farrell
ADVOCATES CAN BECOME BLIND TO THEIR MISSION BUT A LITTLE CHILD MAY PROVE TO BE THE ONE TO OPEN THEIR EYES. The dull pain in her thigh was a reminder. It would always be so, and the memory of that grilling at the hospital would never leave the child’s memory portion of her brain. Today, the hospital memory came back for another go-round of trauma and an adult understanding of those who eagerly look for things that aren’t there. In the hospital emergency room, a woman stands over her. The air smells of familiar antiseptics that assail the little girl’s nostrils. Looking too large for any human head, the woman’s face, surrounded by a rough halo of curly hair, comes within inches of her nose. Anger and authority are written all over her face. The social worker wants to have her way and the evidence she seeks. It doesn’t matter that the surgeon is waiting to perform emergency surgery; she will have her admission of guilt. They’re about to wheel the gurney to the operating 58
room elevator, and she needs to get her evidence now. The social worker requires an entry of responsibility in her notes, and time is short. “Tell me,” she insists in a breath smelling of cigarettes and coffee. The noxious odors are unpleasant and alien to the little girl. The light hurts the girl’s eyes as the lamp flashes behind the woman’s moving head. The green-tiled room is hot, and her leg is throbbing with pain. Her parents are outside, her father holding back the tears he so wants to free. “They hurt you, didn’t they,” the woman continues with an increased intensity bordering on a command as the medical staff rushes to prepare for the emergency surgery. “They burned you, and that’s how you got that wound! Didn’t your parents burn you?” The grilling continues in blatant disregard of the surgical sheets, the pole
for the IV, and the scurrying staff rushing to hold the elevator. “Tell me what they did to you!” It was a command, almost a scream, in a tone the girl had never heard. But the woman fails to recognize the six-year-old’s absence of fear of anyone or anything. A child, a frail young tiger in a family of stoics, who challenges herself in feats other children avoid, knows she is right. The thought strengthens her resolve to respond to this agitated woman. And the words of her sister come to her. Her older sister had said, “You remember when mommy and daddy were making believe they were fighting? Only three years old, and you picked up a coat hanger and ran at daddy yelling, ‘You stop! You can’t hurt my mommy.” Now, she would stand up again, but this time she is three years older, and the young tiger is more robust than before.
Books ‘N Pieces Magazine — April 2022 — www.BooksNPieces.com
