A Room with a View.

this was another piece I'd done for class based on "Viewfinder" by Raymond Carver. I took the issues and changed them up a little.

Hazel ran her finger tips along the white wall. It wasn’t padded. Not this room anyway, but it was still horribly clinical. The carpet was scratchy beneath her bare feet and her heels kept catching on her too-long hospital issue pyjama bottoms. The only thing that differentiated this room from the other common rooms throughout the institution was the view.  The large bay window framed the woodland just outside the building and the mountains far off into the horizon which were often dusted with snow.  Hazel spent most of her time in here, just watching out of the window or leaning against it with her nose buried in a book.

    A small smile ghosted over Hazel’s lips as she walked towards the window, opening it and breathing in the  scent of outside. Before she came here, she wouldn’t have revelled so much in the little things. The clichéd things like the birds singing or the way the trees moved in the wind, the sound it made. Chances are, she wouldn’t have noticed any of it. Hazel huffed out a breath, tucking a stray strand of her dark locks behind her ear as she temporarily left the view behind to go and pick her book of the week. She’d read her way through all of the Lord of The Rings books in the past month and now she fancied something a little different. Something completely different, if she was honest.

    “Moby Dick is a good read, then again, so is Catch -22. Wouldn’t touch War and Peace, though.”

    Hazel turned from the bookshelf to face the direction where the voice was coming from. She hadn’t noticed the man sitting there, in the wheelchair amidst all of the other chairs in the room. She had thought she was alone, as she usually was. Hazel has been coming into this room for the biggest part of the year, it was the only one which no-one else seemed to bother with and Hazel could never fathom why.

    “Or you know, you could just stick with Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice. Although, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is much better.”

    “I’ll bare that in mind.” Hazel tried to keep the slightly curious tone out of her voice. She’d never seen this man before and she’d been here a while.

    The stranger was silent, staring out of the window.

    Hazel tried to follow his line of view, but there seemed to be nothing from where she was standing, simply the massive oak tree that signalled the start of the forest. “So.” She began after she had picked up her book and was walking over to her usual place by the window. Hazel re-arranged the cushions and swung her legs up onto the little window seat, her back pressed almost painfully against the wall as she tried to angle herself to see the man. When he didn’t respond, Hazel tried again. “You like reading?”

    The man snorted in response, his gaze briefly torn from the swaying branches of the oak and his cold, lifeless blue eyes pierced through Hazel’s brown ones. “Do I come across as the bookish type?”

    “You could recommend some pretty damned good books, for being someone who doesn’t     read.”
    
    “When you have nothing better to do with your time, you pick up on a few things.”

And that was it. He shut up again. He removed his gaze from hers and went back to staring.

    “So you do read?” Hazel persisted.

    “I used to.”
    
    “Why don’t you now?”  Hazel couldn’t help it, she was curious as to why this man was in this room, the only room in the place where you could get a decent book, when he didn‘t have any intention of reading.

    “Are you a shrink posing as a patient?” The man’s eyes were back on hers, and Hazel felt exposed.

    “Do you think I’d be here all the time if I was?”

    “You ask a lot of questions.”
    
    “You don’t give straight answers to many.” Hazel raised her eyebrow, a small smile playing on her lips at his lack of a response. She waited a second longer before picking up her book and settling in to read, occasionally looking up over the book at the stranger who just kept staring out into the world.

    “I also can’t turn pages very well.”

    That made Hazel look up. It had taken over two hundred pages before he had spoken again, jumping back into the conversation as though no time had passed at all.  Hazel waited for a minute, waited for him to continue. To finish. To say something more than he said. But he didn’t. Hazel put her book down onto the seat beside her and looked over at him; trying to work him out a little.

    It hit her like a hangover. It was kind of like when you wake up after a session and you are alright, right up until you move and all of a sudden you hurt in places you never knew existed, the room is spinning and your body feels like it’s being weighted down to the floor. The guy couldn’t turn the page. Literally.

    “Oh.” Hazel stated into the silence, not entirely sure of what else to say. She’d spent close to two hours in a room with this man and didn’t even notice he had prosthetic hands.
    
    “Took you long enough.”

    “I’m sorry.” Hazel truly was, although she was unsure why.

    “So, you like reading?” The man was looking at her again, his head tilted slightly, but Hazel couldn’t look anywhere now except at his hands.

    “Uh, yeah.” Hazel’s attention snapped back up to his face. “Nothing else to do, you know?”

    Just like that, there was silence again. Hazel wanted to ask how he lost his hands, but she didn’t. She joined in his little game and just sat there, doing nothing, trying to see what he is getting out of it.
    
    “Iraq.”

Hazel raised her eyebrow again, completely unsure as to why he was stating random place names.  
    
    “My right arm, below the elbow and my left hand are in little pieces in some street in Iraq. The rest of my left arm is God knows where. They had to amputate.” He stated casually, like someone who was talking about the weather It’s cold outside, slight chance of rain, but it’s fine - I have an umbrella.

    “I’m sorry.”

    “But I’m not the only one who is in pieces, am I?” His gaze flicked from the solid oak tree to Hazel and back again.

    “I…um…” Hazel looked down at her hands, sudden urge compelling her to touch them and make sure that they were still there.

    “Not what I meant.”

    Of course Hazel knew that. Having been a patient at the Serenity Recovery Centre for a little under a year, she knew exactly what he meant. He never asked why she was there. She never asked why he was there either because there was no point. They were both there for the same reason. They were broken toys that had been given away for someone else to play with, to prod, to dress up in stupid clothing, to talk about feelings and attend tea parties under the guise that they were getting to be human again. But it was like they were taken from one puppeteer and handed to another. Strings still attached.

    “Do you get many visitors?” Hazel turned the page down in her book - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - before closing it and looking back at the man.

    “Family Tradition to enlist in the Army, kind of a Family tradition to return home all parts intact though. They don’t know I’m here.”

    “I see.”

    “You?”

    “My lifestyle didn’t do much for my family. I don’t know where they are now, they leave, they never come back but there isn’t any forward address, really, is there?”

    Hazel was grateful for the silence her statement brought, the snow falling gently outside of the window caused a slight chill to set into the room. She leaned against the window and latched it closed, crossing her legs Indian style so she could sit and look out at the outside world. There was no point in continuing the conversation even though there were a million things she wanted to ask the man. Probably his name for starters. The world outside of the room was behind dusted with a fine white powder which would soon turn into a blanket that would cover up all of the imperfections, all of nature’s flaws.

    Even nature had a way of dealing with its problems. Of covering them up and pretending that they didn’t exist. Hazel watched the world continue to revolve, to continue doing whatever it was that it was doing before she came here and would continue to do its own thing while she was here and after she left. She watched the little flurry of snow turn into somewhat of a blizzard and smiled softly at the old oak tree, swaying in the wind, acutely aware of the stranger’s gaze doing the same thing.

Author's Note

Feel free to comment on anything; I know it needs work so any Concrit is incredibly appriciated.

Reviews

[trueman]

interesting and sounds like an intriguing relationship starting between the two. you write well and i'm sure that after the requisite few days in the desk drawer the editing needed will come naturally.

good luck to you