Al Jazeera News
Twelve years of schooling, five years of medical school, two years of residency—all for one purpose: to help people.
Years earlier, he’d watched his beloved Grand-Amai die writhing in pain–for the want of morphine and a kind doctor willing to travel the distance to treat her. He vowed when he got his degree he’d never let anyone suffer as she had.
Six years working at West End Hospital had proven him wrong. People in his care suffered all the time. They suffered from drug shortages, unsanitary conditions, a complete lack of medical supplies. They suffered from the scant wages paid to the doctors, so that only a handful stayed on.
He’d stayed—often spending his own meager salary on medicine and medical supplies—but it had only helped in the short-term. It was like buying Band-Aids for a sliced artery.
There was only one way to help everyone.
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150 words
This has been an edition of What Pegman Saw. To read more stories inspired by the prompt, click here.
This is a fictional account inspired by current headlines in Zimbabwe. To learn more, visit Zimbabwe doctors’ strike: patients bare[sic] the brunt of protests.
Quereche’s dark eyes slid to Michu, amused. A smile dimpled Michu’s check, but she kept her eyes on her stitching. Los turistas were comical, if nothing else: from their first gasps when they stepped upon the floating island, to their wide eyes when they realized that the huts had electricity generated from solar panels, to their open mouths when they heard the radio station broadcasting the afternoon musica to all the Uru’s floating sister islands. They would cup their hands and whisper How strange.
k. Rawson 