3 Quotes by Scott Archer Jones

Flambé - done beside a table covered in crisp starched linen in a French restaurant: a method to burn food and money simultaneously.

Women and men in scrubs swept into the room and checked the monitors and the bags. They strode out, nodded at the quartet slumped in chairs against the wall, and scuffed down the hall. Nurses changed shifts, moved the life of the place along while patients and visitors waited frozen, locked into little boxes of concern and fear.The strange hours of the pre-dawn arrived, when the hospital hushed even as the business of sickness and death ground on.

He had to wait in the sitting room for forty-five minutes. The room smelled of disinfectant and potpourri—he had the outlandish sensation he was in a medicinal Indian restaurant. During this time, he sat back in the corner, poised on the edge of his seat. It made the waiting easier if he leaned forward on his elbows with his hands between his legs as his knees drummed up and down. The other patients spread out through the room, each maximizing the distance to another human.