SHORT STORIES

TRINA ALLEN

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From REMISSION "Hey! Hey, Ray!" The man walked on, ignoring her plea for him to stop. Thinking maybe he hadn't heard her, Dr. Angel Carter picked up her pace. Her feet hurt, even in her Nikes, and her heart pounded from the short jog. Yet he was still well ahead of her. It was the second time Angel had thought she'd seen him. But her tired imagination must have been playing tricks on her, because Ray Carter had no reason to be at the hospital. He had left Angel two years ago and moved to Georgia to teach high school history. As far as she knew, he hadn't been north of Atlanta since. The man who looked so much like her estranged husband disappeared around a corner. Angel's cell phone vibrated. She glanced at the text message, "Room 312." That was six-year-old Evelyn Perry's room. Angel unconsciously rubbed the old scar on her own abdomen. A pediatric hematologist specializing in rare blood disorders of children, Angel suspected complications from the splenectomy Evelyn had the day before. Angel didn't bother with the elevator. Instead, she pulled the stairwell door open and ran up the stairs, two at a time. Evelyn had been born with spherocytosis, a rare blood disorder. Angel had treated Evelyn through crisis after crisis, as her small frail body struggled to fight off infections. Eventually the only remaining course of treatment was the removal of Evelyn's spleen to stop it from destroying her red blood cells at a rate faster than her bone marrow could replace them. Sprinting past Evelyn's worried-looking mother and through the door to room 312, Angel immediately recognized the signs of crisis. A grim-faced young nurse monitored Evelyn's blood pressure. An older woman, the head pediatric nurse, said, "Dr. Carter, I was about to page you again." Her eyes met Angel's and held for a moment. "Fever's spiked to 103 and she's developed a productive cough." The young nurse said, "I checked her vitals an hour ago. Her temp was 99 with no cough." Angel looked at Evelyn's flushed face and said, "Start her on IV penicillin, stat." to read more

This page contains some of my published stories and information about upcoming publications. More coming soon. Happy reading! THE MULBERRY TREE--live in Spark Bright Issue 3, Winter 2009 Have you ever had a terrible day at work–one so bad that you wanted to walk away and never return? What makes that day different from any other? For a young math teacher who has difficulty dealing with unmanageable students, it is the pervasive influence of her own childhood. REMISSION Pediatric hematologist Dr. Angel Carter treats young patients with rare blood disorders while grieving for her own lost child and marriage. The story grew from my own experiences with spherocytosis, a rare hereditary blood disease. TO LIVE AGAIN--winner of Write Around the Block's January 2008 short story contest Allison is too frightened to get out of bed and turn on a light at night. And during the day, she is too scared to leave her house. Then she adopts Vanquisher, a scrappy pit bull terrier mix facing euthanasia. NOTHING BUT TROUBLE For a young mother with three children and a dog named Trouble, daily life is a struggle--until it takes an unexpected twist in “Nothing but Trouble.” It's a beautiful story that leaves me with a renewed assumption that "The more things change, the more they stay the same"! -- Shirley Allard, editor, Word Catalyst PECULIAR ADVICE--winner of an excellence award from Dana Literary Society Read a satirical and humorous segment about one day in a North Carolina teacher's life. BYSTANDER--a friendly triathlon Amber suffers to compete in the stifling heat of a North Carolina June morning, until helped in a most unexpeced way. STAND-IN SANTA--a high-tech look at Christmas! Carrie discovers that she is Santa Claus--having inherited the ability to change physical reality with one click of the mouse. This story touches me more than any of my others because it brings bittersweet memories of my own father, who died in 2007. I wrote STAND-IN SANTA before my father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. We had no idea he was sick in 2004. The father character in STAND-IN SANTA had my father's illness and I wrote him dead before I even knew my father was sick. Perhaps I was guided in the writing of the story. Maybe the story does not veer as far from reality as I thought it did.