TUESDAY TALES - WORD PROMPT "HARDY"

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I rubbed my eyes, unable to believe what I had seen. Then I remembered my mother. With a hardy burst of speed, I ran for the subway. My lungs screamed as I pushed beyond endurance into pain to reach home and help her. Hardly able to breathe, I reached the station and jumped on a train seconds before the doors closed.

Each minute that passed felt like an hour. I had to get to Ma. My mind was fuzzy. Could a statue have saved me from Spider and the Ape guy? Impossible. Then what happened to them and why hadn’t they killed me? Or did they and I was a ghost? Reality and imagination blended until I couldn’t tell the difference.

When the train doors opened at my station, I raced out. Fumbling at the door, my hand shook so bad I couldn’t get the damn key in the lock. Cursing, I grabbed one hand with the other and managed to open the door.

No elevator for me. I slung the door open and bent over Ma. I snatched her phone off the floor and dialed 911. Feeling her neck for a pulse, I couldn’t find one. But what the fuck did I know? I’m a kid, not a doctor. Silently I prayed, made every deal with God I could to save my mother.

I could have sworn it was hours before the ambulance and doctors arrived. But I checked my watch and it was only eight minutes. A team of two doctors hovered around Ma, trying different things, speaking to each other in code I didn’t understand.

One guy looked at me with sad eyes.

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. “She’s gone.”

What? No. He was wrong. Ma was not gone. She couldn’t be. She was my mother. She’d just od’d. He had to fix that.

“It’s drugs. OD. Can’t you fix it?”

The guy shook his head. “I’m really sorry, kid.” He turned to face his partner, a woman. “Better call the coroner and children’s services.”

“Children’s services?” I practically yelled.

“Yeah. How old are you?”

TUESDAY TALES

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