Writing Prompt Response

Storytelling Hands

January Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Self”

My hands are telling my stories.

Waiting for my husband at a medical complex, I sit on a stone landscape wall and read. Although the calendar says January, the day feels more like April. In fact, the sun is so strong, my eyes strain to read.

As I take this photo, I notice the age showing on my hands. Not a complaint, just an observation. I also see that my nails are in need of a fill and a coat of new polish, but my nail tech has Covid and has no idea when she’ll return to work. My hands look and feel dry despite the creams and lotions that fail to offset the constant handwashing and sanitizing to ward off a virus that just won’t go away.

I realize my fingers have no rings and remember I had to remove them when I was hospitalized in April. I didn’t put them back on because I’d lost so much weight and worried they’d fall off and be lost. And, now, I’m not sure where they are. How ironic that they may be lost anyway.

And, I think about when I was in the hospital that shares its campus with this medical complex. It was my first time hospitalized. I remember how bruised my hands were from all the IVs. They were tender for weeks. This left hand was the worst because it was there that the best veins were found. But, one vein after another “blew” until the nurses moved up my arms and then looked at my legs for fresh territory to plant their needles.

I feel the presence of my fitness watch on my left wrist and think about how for two months after my hospitalization, it rarely registered more than 2,000 steps and now it routinely goes above 11,000.

I remember that this hand was the last thing I saw as I lost consciousness before my gallbladder surgery in November. Never having had surgery before, I was nervous. I held out my left hand and concentrated on it until I faded away.

My hands tell of a year of illnesses and recoveries — a year of discomfort, fear, and rejuvenation. And, now, these hands are typing those stories — my stories.

© Dennett 2022

In response to the January “Self” 6-word challenge by Mary Chang Story Writer: