They won't let Susie visit the hospital any more, because she steals the containers of that gel you're supposed to squirt on your hands, because it's got alcohol, she mixes it with Diet Coke. Which may sound amusing but really it's helping to spread the MRSA bug, so I'm on their side, not hers.

I've given my other sister Stacie a kidney, of course she's not one bit grateful. Except she did put in a card that she loved me, which is something she's never said before in her life. Except now she tells me, she said that just to get my kidney. She's feeling a lot better, you can see it in her face, she's like a vampire that's just had a good suck of someone. I'm feeling a lot worse. I'm like an old woman, like Doris in the bed opposite.

Stacie keeps going downstairs in her hospital gown and through the automatic doors to peer at the old men, their ward is on the ground floor. They're disgusting, she says, I'm going to be like Miss Marple and not marry ever and I'll have only one kid, so it won't hamper my investigations. That's typical Stace, hamper my investigations. One kid, one kidney. We're a bit like Siamese twins now. Meanwhile Susie is murdering herself with hand gel, she'll be wanting my other kidney soon. I'll have to dream a good excuse, or maybe I'll tell her that's not allowed in the rules. But she'll whip it out of me somehow. She's terribly persistent.

Frances Gapper writes very short stories and poems.


To link to this story directly: http://wigleaf.com/200811marple.htm

Photo detail on main page courtesy of James Nash.

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