Princess Diana overnight oats were more than breakfast, they were a quiet act of grace. On certain mornings, one doesn’t need words to sense the sacred. For Jamie, it was the stillness before sunrise when the world seemed to hold its breath, and the sky turned rosy behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. Another long night … Read more
There was a winter – Jamie Willow later remembered one full of side-of-the-ankle bruising from escorted rows of women to waiting ambulances – in which his night shifts ran on, sleep a few reluctant minutes between the beeps of his alarm. It was bone-deep sort of tired. In one snowy evening, it was her old … Read more
The muted sound of fluorescent lighting bounced off the deserted corridor and Jamie smoothed a strand of stray hair out of her ear. It was second-seventeen p. m. At some distance farther up the corridor a monitor was clicking persistently a sound she had been long used to. The time between rounds seemed endless and, … Read more
It was almost 2 o clock in the morning. The hospital ward was growing slack, the murmur of the machines constant in the foreground. Jamie was leaning on the counter of the break room, her scrubs not as fresh as usual, her bones creaking as another shift ended. She smiled, opened her glass jar. Cold … Read more
Rain had poured since before the sun had started to go down, gentle and steady against my kitchen window. I stood there barefoot, pajama pants scraping the tile, showing peanut butter into a jar as I had a thousand times before. My hands went on autopilot at this point to measure out oats, pour in … Read more
At night the lights were always buzzing in the break room. It was a dull weary hum, and it filled the place, and never allowed you to forget where you were. I recall being propped on a counter at 2 a. m. on a Tuesday, holding a spoon, mixing a jar of overnight oats full … Read more
I remember when I would hear the nurse folkships squeaking across the linoleum tile floors, and that I would lean by the counter in the breakroom and my two cold hands would cradle my mug. I recall there was one night. It was 03:17 in the morning. It was April on the calendar hanging on … Read more
The hour it happened was going on 2:47 in the morning and the doors of the elevator opened with that over-loud chime that I was now accustomed to. I was in a time-out, in an hour-long break, leaning against the dappled wall of the nurse lounge, jar in hand; my eyes feeling tired after spending … Read more
The morning that Elsie began her third term at school, and before she began boy terms, there had been something in the air that sounded quieter, softer. With the first light in the window I stood, barefoot, in our kitchen, dolloping the oats into those filled with jars, just as I had done a hundred … Read more