Rain like Pellets

by

Steven Hunley

It was a miserable day. He turned on the windshield wipers and heard them flipping, click click, click click. He switched on the heater. Pamela was wrapped in her pink bathrobe, wearing bedroom slippers smashed flat at the back. They were soaking wet from the puddle by the curb, and her hair was up in a knot.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I have to do it.”

“We could wait….”

“I can’t wait any longer,” she said flatly.

The street narrowed and went over a bridge. Under it, the freeway was jam-packed as usual.

“Why do you suppose they want you in so early?”

“They’re busy. They do it all day long.”

The road went by a graveyard with crooked headstones and a golf course with a tall green net for a fence.

“Is that it on the right?”

“That’s the address.”

They pulled into the parking lot and after they got out he pushed open the glass door and let her go in first. The waiting room was cold and drafty. The patients didn’t seem to care if they left the door open or what.

When she left he opened a book. After reading one chapter the chair was noticeably harder and uncomfortable, so much he decided they designed them that way on purpose. About an hour and a half later she came out.

“How do you feel?”

“Sort of numb all over.”

“It was longer than I expected.”

“Longer than last time.”

“I’m sorry.”

She slept in the car most of the way home and all through the night, except when she went to the bathroom to replace the pad. When the rain grew fierce and hammered the metal carport like pellets of lead, she witnessed it from the narrow bathroom window, transfixed like a child, certain she knew what would happen next. When she realized she didn’t, and that she never would, she went upstairs and lay back down beside him and cried herself to sleep.

©Steven Hunley 2013