MMWUC: Where's Rick?

Rick is wigging out this morning. For inspiration on your Monday Morning Wake-Up Call, he gives you this exercise: push-ups.

As far as writing is concerned, just write. Sometimes you just have to get back to the basics. Riff on about whatever, even your thoughts about how stupid this riffing exercise is, but keep looking up at the junk you've collected around you. Throw some of that into your riff. It's the opposition of ideas that often generates the most interesting stories. Go forth...forget the rules, guidelines, what you've been told in classes, seminars, from panels, or writing books...just write. Let the words drip from the end of the keyboard.

Today I have to get another two of those nasty basil carcinoma spots excised from my body. Six-to-nine stitches and we're done, but what if...

An unfamiliar doctor enters the room, "Oh, where's Dr. Jones?" I ask.

"She's unavailable," he says, his voice unemotional, his manner cold. No extended hand in greeting. No chit-chat to comfort me, and I feel so in need of comfort in my backless gown and....

"Lie down."

I comply. He seems to know what he's doing. Goes directly to the spot on my arm and swabs it with the numbing agent. The spot on the leg is slightly bigger, and there's almost a grin on his face when he slathers it with the same agent. It seems generous and beyond anything I've had before. Then the needle comes out. It's a good sized needle, but nothing I haven't seen before.

"For pain," he says.

"Yeah, right," I jest. The pain is somewhat beyond the stinging of the needle for the purposes of numbing when he inserts it in my arm, then my leg. He sighs once he's done then a slowly building laugh eeks out of his closed mouth.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

I look closer. "No."

The door bursts open. Two cops train their gun on him. He raises the needle with one hand and grabs me with the other. They shoot. The sound is deafening in the small room, and the force of the blasts push him away from me as I struggle out of his grasp. He's resilient, and it takes a dozen shots before one cop reaches out and pulls me away. The needle falls to the floor. The man crumples. Blood flows.

Dr. Jones and even more police invade the small room. They hustle me out.

"Thank goodness we got here in time," Dr. Jones says. "Be thankful he didn't prick you with the needle."

"But he did. Twice," I say. I start to shake. The pain in my leg and arm grows.

A look of horror comes across her face. The cops back away. Their guns now trained on me.
- - -
Now I really don't want to go to the doctors.

Write on! Write on!! Brothers and sisters, amen. Write on!!!