Clipboards and White

One of my short story has just been published in Litro, a London Literary Magazine. You can read it here.

Extract:

The starched white sheets crinkle beneath my thighs. The walls are white; clinical. The door is pale and open. Beyond it, the muffled voices of people in white travelling along the corridor. I see flashes of clipboards, glasses, and white; maybe jackets. I am not sure why I am here. My head is woolly and my feet numb. Looking through the window, which is higher than usual, there is a meadow of greens and splashes of yellow. Beyond that nothing but sky; grey mainly. I need to wash my hands but they refuse to move, lying heavily, tingling, as though dipped in iced water. I was told to lie prostrate. It’s the drugs, they said, just rest.

My mind never rests. One. Two. Three. The tiles above the sink are unsymmetrical. Four. Five. Six. There is no middle groove where the grouting should lie. Seven. The fourth tile should not be in the middle. The lack of symmetry makes me feel uncomfortable and unsettles a sense of order, or disorder, in my mind. I remember, maybe earlier, a doctor in the house, an ambulance, a cup of coffee, a dog and Sandra, in no particular order. Why do I remember Sandra last? Where is she? Continued on the Litro website.