She felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t get all the blood off when she’d washed. It had dried to black and caked in the lines and creases of her palms, limning each wrinkle with a line as fine as a sable brush’s. Her lifeline was painted with the blood of her best friend.Judy stuck her hands between her legs so she wouldn’t look at them anymore. It didn’t help. Mary’s blood stained her snowpants, from where she had cradled her in the snow. Judy looked around the room for distraction. A TV was on, mounted high in a corner of the empty waiting room, which was reserved for surgeries. The volume was turned off on the TV, but Judy could see it was a never-ending update on the blizzard. The snow fell on the TV screen just as it fell outside. A reporter interviewed a bureaucrat in a tie and a ski hat. Then the screen showed a picture of huge dump trucks salting the highway.Judy couldn’t focus on the screen. Her thoughts kept returning to Mary. Lying on the ground, bleeding. She was in surgery now.
