Six Sisters Wearing Flip-Flops in the Damp Hospital Waiting Room Try to Hold it Together

but it’s impossible. Even before the doctor comes to talk to them, they’re wiping their eyes, trying to hide their fear, reciting the sad litany: rising temperatures, decreased oxygen, toxic blooms. But only in their minds. They don’t want to upset the others. Maybe just maybe one of them is conjuring sun coral, pink sea whip, staghorn, the violet tentacles of dragon torch coral, its glistening gold tips. They feel the warm salt water on their toes, lapping against the metal chairs in the waiting room.

They begged their elderly parents to come to the hospital with them, but they are deniers. When water occasionally creeps into their house, their mother and father silently mop it up or use a sump pump.

Behind the double doors of the ER, medical professionals triage. Bleached coral. A dying pilot whale with 80 plastic bags in his stomach, an injured Pacific green sea turtle tangled in plastic fishing line, loons poisoned by algae blooms. One thousand sea otters coated with oil.

The water in the waiting room is rising, but slowly. There’s still time to remember snorkling in Honolua Bay as children—the red sea urchins, butterfly fish, parrot fish, yellow tangs. The stunning triggerfish with its electric blue, yellow, and orange markings. That huge turtle that poked its head out of the water and gazed at them like some wise, ancient creature.

The water is now up to the sisters’ knees, but still they wait for a report from the doctor. They shed their clothes when it’s up to their waist, swimming to pass the time. One swims to the cafeteria, returning with sandwiches in a waterproof bag.

When a rogue wave sweeps in, one wall in the waiting room collapses. The sisters are grateful no one is hurt. One bangs on the double-doors, but they are locked. One texts their parents: I don’t think we can come back from this. Their mother responds with a frowny face, saying: Thanks, Debbie Downer. Just what I need today.

The waiting room water is rising, getting hotter, rumbling. The six sisters hold hands, promising to never let go. When the water reaches their chests, an explosion of sounds: blast boom crack bellow. Walls crumble, doors burst open and the gush of water hurls nurses and sea otters, blasthole drills and doctors, bucket-wheel excavators and sea birds, shale shakers and medical equipment. Whales, drill rigs, SUVS, icebergs, cows. The sisters hold on to each other as long as they can.

Lemons

After the case worker reminds Kate she’ll return in two hours to pick Mandy up, after Kate and Mandy stand at the door waving good-bye, after Kate gives her four-year-old daughter a nervous hug and the girl limply hugs back, after Kate consults her list of activities and the first three fail—Kate can’t put together the plastic hippos for the Hungry Hippo game and she jams the red hippo’s parts too hard and they break, Mandy prefers not to be read to and it breaks Kate’s heart how politely she says this, and Mandy thanks Kate for the plush teddy bear but when she puts it aside and Kate asks why Mandy whispers that it’s scary looking and is there a teddy here like the one at Miss Helen’s—after all this, Kate feels her failure as a mother so intensely, wants a drink so badly that she’s about to phone her sponsor and then the case worker and say sorry, this was too soon; I know I begged for an unsupervised visit but let’s try another day. But she notices Mandy has stopped crying and is watching a bird perched on a branch in the back yard.

“Would you like to go outside?” she asks and the girl nods. The bird flies away, and Kate looks around for another bird, but no luck. “I’m sorry I don’t have a swing or slide like you have at Miss Helen’s. But we can figure out something to do.” She picks up a handful of pebbles from the path. “I guess counting pebbles won’t be much fun.” She tries to laugh, cursing herself for not buying that sandbox at Target.

“Is that a lemon tree?” Mandy asks. “Can we pick lemons?”

The question dangles in the air. Kate imagines a bloody gash on Mandy’s arm from the sharp thorns on the tree, some as long as an inch. She tries to say no, but Mandy’s already at the tree, reaching for a lemon. Kate stops her, pointing out the thorns. The tree is heavy with leaves and yellow citrus and sweet white blossoms; it’s easy to miss the spikey branches. What a sweet mother she thought she’d be after her own fucked-up childhood. But every living thing has thorns. Hers were longer and sharper than she could have imagined.

Mandy’s determined to pick lemons, but they’re too high. Kate gets an ancient fruit tree picker half buried in the dirt. She puts her hands around Mandy’s—how can her daughter’s hands be so tiny, so soft?—and helps the girl hold the pole up for the perfect ripe lemon. They tug and the basket head pops off, falling to the ground. The wires are loose; it takes 14 tries of reattaching the basket head to pick three lemons. Mandy holds these three lemons like they’re gold coins and they head back inside.

After helping her daughter quarter the lemons and squeeze the juice into a bowl, some dripping to the floor; after letting her daughter taste a bit of sugar on a spoon and then mixing in three teaspoons and feeling the lemon sugar smilestick of the linoleum floor on their bare feet; after her daughter adds water and ice cubes, counting 1-2-3- 4-5, and stirs so vigorously liquid splashes to the floor; after feet washing and hand washing and careful pouring into two small glasses—after all this, they take their lemonade to the front yard, sitting together on the porch swing, sipping and waiting for the case worker to return. •





Claudia Monpere’s flash appears in Split Lip, SmokeLong Quarterly, Craft, Flash Frog, Trampset, The Forge, and elsewhere. She won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review, the  2024 Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine, and the 2023 Smokelong Workshop Prize. She has stories in Best Small Fictions 2024 and 2025 and Best Microfiction 2025 and 2026. Her flash collection, The Periodic Family, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press.

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