Word Count: 485
She painted the kitchen first, a rich deep red like her mother’s, that first kitchen she remembered of her childhood, upstairs from her grandparents, her father’s folks. She painted the cabinets bone white because she couldn’t remember what color her mother’s had been.
This was her first house after years of apartments. She bought it with money she’d saved since her first job at St. Augustine’s Hospital, her first job as a nurse. She’d been there twenty-two years and now she was Head Nurse of the floor, the night shift which was always her preference. She’d always hated long dark nights alone and now the days were spent sleeping and in the day, she’d always felt safe. Safe enough to close her eyes. Safe enough to sleep.
The dining room opened from the kitchen so she painted that the same color red. She got premium rates for the night shift and a raise from the recent promotion so she bought a small oriental rug for under the table. It looked beautiful, exquisitely lush on the newly waxed walnut floors. She made white lace curtains that she hung on rods that set into the wide trimmed windows. She loved the effect.
The dining room was tiny, with two doorways and two windows that cut the room into tall narrow-stripped walls. She had plenty of red left over and started in on the living room soon after she’d finished.
You’d think, as a nurse, she’d be weary of red but she wasn’t. Blood didn’t scare her. Blood was the color of life. She was a very good nurse, one of those with the balance of caring and straightforward service. Everyone liked her, the patients, the doctors who trusted her dedication, and the other nurses and aides on her floor. You wouldn’t say they were close nor shared gossip, but rather a deep respect for the professional she was.
She bought more carpets, sewed all the curtains, room by room, waxing the floors, painting the walls. The same blood red walls and the same bone-white curtains downstairs and up in the bedrooms.
When the last room was finished, all the furniture put back into place, she remembered that she’d been mistaken; her mother’s kitchen had been bright sunshine yellow until the very last day.
She awoke as the sun smiled into her window in late afternoon, showered, dressed, and prepared a small salad. The kitchen walls glowed as she sat down with paper and pencil to write a few notes out for work. Muffins, she wrote. She’d stop and pick up some muffins for the nurses as a snack as the night shift wore on. They’d be surprised.
Charts was the next thing that came to her mind. She’d show the staff the new chart system.
Blood Drive, she wrote. And underlined it twice in red ink for she’d used more paint than she’d thought.
