Short Stories

The swimmers, perhaps fifty in all, huddle around the dock at Inspiration Lake. From the way they stamp their bare feet and rub their arms pink, it’s clear that some of these swimmers are first-timers. Melissa is cold, but she’s swum in colder and tougher conditions than this.

I’m going to wet myself if I don’t get to a toilet soon. “Nurse,” I call. Not loud or anything. Not obnoxious. Everyone in the ward is asleep except me. The nurse on duty continues scribbling notes in her logbook. Her bun quivers as she writes.

All week Eve hoped for the typhoon. She checked her Apple watch religiously, keeping tabs on the cyclone tracker between lessons and sometimes even during them, when her students’ heads were bent over their grammar exercises and compositions.

I ring the bell and wait at the door alone today. Tung said he was feeling achy and needed to lie down. That sounds grand, really, what with this humidity. And yet I cannot bring myself to stay away. Our grandson doesn’t care for us, but he knows us. If we do not come, who knows how soon it will be before he forgets us completely and regards us as strangers? And so I come...