Argo Online

By Chanel Fargesen

One town, one hospital, one window. That’s all the people of Bertentown knew and looked forward to. You live to get old, and then get a spot on line for the hospital – the one and only hospital this town has to offer.

Old Man George has been in this hospital for the last eighteen years. Why? Heaven only knows by this point. He has the bed—the bed with the window, the only window in the hospital. Every person dreams of getting this bed, to just have a glance of the beautiful outside – to see the white flaky snow land on the bushy green grass, to watch the flowers bloom slowly out of the moist soil. Every person waits in line to get to this bed; when one dies, they move up and get one chance closer to the bed. Old Man George has been extremely lucky.

“Look at those gorgeous birds, chirping and flying around the flowers,” George always says. This only makes all the patients angry and jealous. Greta, the old woman next in line right behind Old Man George for the last eighteen years, can only dream of the outside. In her eyes, Old Man George just won’t die. She is so close, but the wait has felt like centuries to her.

“I need to kill that man somehow. I need to get that bed,” Greta whispers to herself. Greta has been on morphine for seven years now. She was diagnosed with colon cancer about six years ago, and, after one year of torture and pain, the doctors, family, and Greta herself decided that morphine would be the best treatment for her agony.

That same day, Greta grew impatient; she got up and walked toward George’s bed. She grabbed her tiny, orange-colored pill container filled with morphine. She popped one eye in the curtain to see if he was awake. George’s eyes were completely shut. She tiptoed inside of his private area, trying not to make a sound. The floor creaked, and, quickly, Greta jumped to see if George had woken up. His eyes were still sealed shut, so she proceeded towards his bed. She tried to sneak a look through the window, but George was smart. He put the curtain over the window—such a cruel man, that George. She walked toward George’s IV stand, dropping one Morphine pill into the liquid. She watched the white pill fizz as the liquid dissolved it – before she dropped in another, and another, and another, much to her satisfaction. She thought to herself how an overdose should do the trick, finally putting him to his deathbed and getting her the window. Oh, how she wanted that window!

Greta made her way back to her section of her room. She put the morphine back onto her tabletop an