The Isolate

Originally published on Short Fiction Break.

As the elevator climbs towards level nine, the fear rises inside of me. L1, L2, I focus on the ascending numbers, ignoring my anxious reflection gazing back from the glossy sign; Royal Perth Research Institute – the best in biomedical innovation.

L3, L4, it’s Tuesday. Fuck, Tuesdays. I loathe the day all 32 research and development staff are stuffed into the boardroom for an hour of mundane updates. Today, however, is anything but mundane.

L5, L6, my palms sweat inside my pockets as I nervously roll Dad’s cufflinks between my fingers. Mom gave him the antique, gold cufflinks when he started his residency at Brooklyn’s St. Jude’s Hospital. That was 1987, so they were vintage then, I guess.

After Dad, also known to many as Dr James Roark retired, and long after Mom died, he spent hours reading alone. Every day, I’d find him in his wingback chair, feet propped up on his plush olive-green ottoman, overlooking Borough Park. Sometimes, he read Dickens and the classics, other times he read medical journals or sci-fi techno-thrillers by Michael Crichton. That day, it was an Australian novel by Tim Winton titled, Cloudstreet.

...

Read the full story: www.shortfictionbreak.com/the-isolate/