I DIED AS I IMAGINED

flash fiction

I died as I imagined I would die, imagined before the bomb sailed through a window of the clinic. From the moment years before that I bent over my first patient, I sensed I would die there. I burned for five minutes, survived five more, writhing and rolling as my flesh crisped like a pig’s. And then, the pain was gone. There remained nothing but an awareness of my daughter, my youngest, twelve years old, thrusts of her, Lena, Lena, Lena, the clutches at my vitals as fearsome as the final pushes of her birth had been — Lena Lena Lena as life failed Lena LenaLena Lenalenalenalenale —