IN SEARCH OF SILENCE
The first of six assignments for the Iowa Writer's Workshop THE POWER OF THE PEN IN SEARCH OF SILENCE (Assignment one) Alma’s eyes opened to the haze that turned her surrounding into varying shades of darkness, no corners or windows visible that time of day, the eerie blue light of numbers on the ceiling flickered three am. Like every other night every hour she turned to look up to an imagined time of seven am. She anticipated another day where her existence was defined by numbers. The numbers of people she saw, the evaluation they gave her when the email requested a rating for her kindness, promptness, cleanliness of the rooms, the amount of wait time before seen. A familiar nausea rolled over her. “Do the patients know?” All of her documentation created a pattern for billing, ratings for physicians dipped as their “efficiency” improved. Corporate medicine forced numbers. One of her colleagues already committed suicide, he was disgusted by the billing patterns. ...