100 Word Challenge: Normal Saline

The aptly named 100 Word Challenge, writing a story in exactly 100 words, still resides here, although VV herownself may be taking it back over again at her regular digs here. In any case, without further ado, here's my contribution this week, "Normal Saline".











“You're putting it in normal, right?”

Her face, porcelain white with pulled back, fiery red hair, looks at me through the glass window of the clean room.

“Yes,” she says with exaggerated, sarcastic impatience.

Normal saline, as opposed to 5% dextrose, was the right answer-but I had to make sure. I watched her work for a moment. She was every red headed cliché come to life-tempestuous, loud, quarrelsome-I was nominally her boss, but wound up mostly doing what she said. I was a little bit in love with her-everybody was. Head down, ponytail bobbing, I watched her work.