Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Cinco de Mayo

**Notice:  This story is based on true events.  Names have been changed to disguise the stupid.

Ella sighed as silently as she could, watching the doctor at work.  It had already been a long day of surgery, but now she was being forced to listen to the man drone on and on about nothing in particular.  Dr. Morris was certainly a skilled surgeon - his patients always left looking better than when they had arrived - but he was a particularly boring man.

Today's stories seemed to center on birthdays for some reason.  Dr. Morris had recounted the tale of his son's first birthday... again.  The boy had been given a ridiculously over-priced cake in the shape of a race car, and, like all one-year-olds, had dived in with both hands, covering himself in cake.  If Ella hadn't seen several dozen other children do exactly the same thing, she might have been mildly amused by the story.  Of course, it didn't help that the adorable one-year-old in the story was now a surly, foul-mouthed sixteen-year-old who seemed to think that the world revolved around him because his father was a surgeon.

"When's your birthday again, Ella?" Dr. Morris asked as he began the painstaking work of sewing up the incision beneath the patient's left breast.

"May fifth," Ella said, reaching over to blot the blood that oozed from the incision.  "Yesterday."

"Ah!  On Cinco de Mayo!  That must have been fun.  Say, is Cinco de Mayo always on May fifth?" he asked.

Ella blinked.  Was he serious?  "Yes."

"You must have great birthday celebrations!  Say, did I ever tell you about Roger's fifth birthday?"

As the doctor began to recount another story, Ella stared at him.  Did he really just ask that question? she wondered.  That was like asking if the Fourth of July always fell on July fourth...  For a brilliant man, Dr. Morris could be awfully stupid.

2 comments:

Ray Veen said...

You do know surgeons.

If your comment section was a lot wider and longer, I'd share some of my stories too.

Danielle said...

Aww! I need to find out how to make it bigger!