Modern Rituals Read Free Page A

wobbly arms and pushed himself onto a pair of shaky, bruised knees. Three breaths eased his dizziness and he chanced standing upright.  
    His shirt squeezed his chest—he pulled it straight and discovered his blazer missing. He now wore a buttoned shirt with a neatly knotted tie and a pair of khakis ending in penny loafers.  
    What happened to my clothes?
    He smoothed his shirt as if inspecting a foreign artifact from another world. His hands moved from chest to belly to belt (reversible, ugh) to pants and then pockets.  
    His right pocket protruded. He reached in and removed a small, folded slip of parchment, rough against his fingertips.  
    A terrifying quiet had descended—so quiet that his heart thumped over his breath.
    He looked to his hands and unfolded the paper.  

    James stared, puzzled by the vague message—then he became aware of his mental state: his breathing found its familiar rhythm, his heart beat as expected and he no longer swallowed against retching—the speed at which he regained control of his faculties shocked him.  
    Perhaps I’ve decided that this really is just a dream.
    A ray of sunshine traveled across James’ face—a mote of dust flittered by, swirling and whooshing in the air on an invisible roller coaster. He estimated the light’s quality as either late afternoon or early morning—likely late afternoon.
    “Well, I’d better get a move on and figure out just what the hell is going on here,” he said, testing his voice.  
    He took a step. A panicked woman burst through the gym doors.

    4

    A particularly beautiful afternoon alighted on Royal Victoria Hospital—one of those afternoons only Belfast could muster with so little effort. Olivia Young worked her regular shift in the Accident and Emergency Ward. With two hours already clocked, she had attended to three heart attacks, two flus and one nasty hip fracture, and now she examined an elderly Irish man complaining of severe fatigue and shortness of breath.  
    She relished every moment of her job as senior nurse.  
    “Now thay-t’s a mightay fane arse you got there missy!” the man said. Olivia had just bent over to pick up a loose piece of trash off the floor.  
    “I thank me’ heart can’t handle much more!”  
    His laughter erupted into a wheezy cough.  
    “God willin’, I could die right hare!”
    Olivia had grown used to this type of commentary and presented her sardonic, that’s-really-funny smile to the man, then said, “If bending over again will finish the job, you shouldn’t tempt me.”  
    The old man hooted and hollered, turning blue in the face as he gasped for air.
    She recorded his vitals and made her way to exit. With most of her body outside of the hospital bed’s perimeter curtain, she explained to the old man that his doctor would review his vitals and then see him.  
    She closed the curtain behind her—the man muttered some bawdy nonsense about her British accent, pushing her to purge from her memory the description of what he would like her to do with her lips—then raced to the nearest sink to scrub from her skin the icky feeling.  
    She relished nearly every moment of her job.  
    “Whoa, what’s got you looking so down?” Dr. Montgomery said as he sidled into the hand sanitization station next to Olivia.
    “Oh, sorry. Nothing really—just one of those days, you know?” Olivia said, this time with a half-cracked, genuine smile.  
    He returned the smile, dried his hands, gave her a gentle pat on the back and fled to his next patient.
    Doctor Montgomery had always been kind to her, especially when she’d first taken her position as senior nurse. She’d moved to Belfast for the position, arriving as an excited 22-year-old, fresh off a train from London aside her then-boyfriend, with whom she’d been madly in love—his love for her, however, had been fickle at best—and when they’d parted ways, she’d found herself isolated and unable to afford her flat. Doctor