A writing exercise, to think before you write...The result.

Wilma Hunnicutt hated doctors offices. She hated the stark white of the walls that would pretty near blind a person, and despised the smell of antiseptic that lingered in the air no matter where you went. You couldn’t escape that smell. It always made her stomach queasy.

She had to hand it to the Doc though, he’d tried to dress this old office up and give it a homey look. He'd added a massive cherry desk that sat in the middle of a room no bigger than a broom closet and put out one of those brass desk lamps that looked like it should be in a law office somewhere. Pictures of his family were scattered on his desk and the wide filing cabinet made out of the same cherry wood behind him. Someone had come in and hung some pictures and added plants in decorative clay pots. But not even pretty pictures of the beach or the green of the plants could make her feel better today.

Something was bad wrong inside of her and she knew it.

She cast the young Doctor Jameison a wary look while he sat behind that big desk in his pristine white smock coat with a pair of Buddy Holly black reading glasses perched on the end of his long straight nose. Brent Jameison, fresh out of med school, had taken over Sam Carpenter’s practice last year when the old coot had retired. Brent had to be hitting close to thirty-five now. He and her middle girl Harriett were the same the age. Damn, where did the time go, it seemed just like yesterday she was running her feet plumb off trying to keep up with her three girls, now she barely saw two of them. Her heart did a little flip at what his verdict would do to her youngest daughter Hope. Hope lived and breathed at Red Clay Mountain and she was the one Wilma worried about. She had always been the sensitive one out of the bunch and there would be no way to hide this from her.

“Well, are you going to sit there all day reading all that mumbo jumbo or are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Wilma said, impatience making her voice curt. The man just couldn’t spit it out and mores the pity because the suspense would kill her long before whatever disease she’d contracted did. Hell, she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore at seventy-two and she only had two goals left in life. Make sure that Red Clay Mountain stayed out of Conner Dupree’s hands and die at home in her own damn bed. The rest of it was just icing on the cake.

Dr. Brent Jameison pulled off those outdated glasses of his and sat back in the maroon leather chair that needed a good dose of WD-40. He pinched his thumb and forefinger across the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes before he spoke, still hesitating.

The sissy, Wilma thought. “Brent, honey, just spit it out. I’m expecting the worse anyway.”