Hannah Schofield
North Hall Middle School
First Place
The Waiting Room
Tears and disinfectant stain my leather back. My wooden handles are worn down from hundreds of anxious hands. I am surrounded by hushed voices, laughter, and tears. A nurse enters the room, “Mr. Clayton? This way please.” An old man with weary eyes rises. To the left of him a young girl sits on her mother's lap humming to herself. Across from them a man sits staring at his phone. A young couple soon enters the door, the wife hunched over in pain, clenching an injured wrist. Her husband leads her over to me, and she sits down whimpering. Her injured hand lies limp across her lap her other hand grasping my sides. Her husband soon rejoins her, attempting to calm her down. “Shh sweetheart. It’ll be alright.” She nods, choking back tears. After spending an hour in a hospital room she emerges wearing a sling across her arm. She points over to me speaking to her husband, “Can you go grab my purse? I left it in the chair.” Walking over to me he grabs her purse. Somedays it hard to remember that all I am is a chair in the hospital waiting room when I see so much. When I hear and feel the pain of so many.
Hospitals have always been a paradox to me. Across the hall one life can enter the world while another one exits. Over the years I’ve heard people talk about their family members and friends, talking about how quickly children grow up. But I’ve never understood this concept. Humans tend to personify life as something that gets larger the longer you live, when in fact you are only heading closer and closer to death.
I’ve come to adopt a few beliefs from living here for so long. The primary that you will all end up dead. Not to say that I wont, for my weathered frame will end up in a dumpster or fire one day. But to a certain extent, yours will too. Hospitals dont stop your encounters with death, they simply reschedule them. You may wonder, how can this be if life enters through the same doors? And I can tell you simply, every ending must have a beginning.
It’s ten o’clock at night and a woman rushes in, expecting her first child. As the night goes on her family members congregate in the waiting room, all giddy with excitement. Listening to the conversations I learned that the gender of the baby was unknown, as bets were being placed. “It’ll be a boy, and he’ll be a great athlete.” “No no no. It’ll be a girl. You know how badly Eva wants a girl.” I’ve never understood this. Why do people care so much about what gender a child will be? Why not the potential they hold and the things they may accomplish? One of my favorite things is seeing children born here, return to deliver the next generation. But all you humans seem to worry about is what the child will be called and whether they’ll wear pink or blue. At nine o’clock the following morning the family was cooing over baby Taylor. A woman leaned over to her husband, “ I told you Bill. I knew it'd be a girl.” The man called Bill rolled his eyes.
A sense of joy floods over me watching the family rejoicing over the birth of a new human. But I am soon brought back to reality. A woman sits on the opposite side of the room her hands folded in prayer. Her voice comes out quiet and raspy. “ Lord, please don't take my son away. But if it be your will, please allow him to reunite with his father.” Silent tears dripped down her cheeks. A doctor soon enters the waiting room, the lines on his face worn with sorrow. “I’m sorry mam.” The woman put her head down a scream of agony erupting from her chest. But it came from deeper within, it came from her heart. That woman stayed all day, a blank expression etched across her face, the tears all gone. The woman left later that night, walking as though she were a zombie. Listening to the receptionist I learned what had happened to her son. While driving under the influence he had gotten in a fatal car accident. It really is a shame the things that happen. So often people survive these car accidents I hear about, but so often they don't.
As the woman exited a father with a small child entered the waiting room. The girl was coughing, her face red with fever. Her father gently cooed to the child telling her fairy tales while they waited. “ And as the prince slid the glass slipper onto her foot he realized he had found the one. He had found Cinderella.” The girl smiled faintly lying her head across her father's lap. A nurse came out in purple scrubs, “Lily?” The girl now asleep was picked up by her father and carried back. After twenty minutes they went home the girl holding a popsicle.
Everyone seems to have someone here. Except sometimes they don't. Some people enter with a caravan of concerned family and friends. But some people don't. Some people hear those dreaded words, “It’s terminal” holding nothing but the hand of their own fear. That sometimes seems worse than death itself. Though I’ve never had relationships, they seem to be so crucial to you humans. You thrive off of them. They are your foundation. However some people enter this hospital and never exit, and no one would know the difference. Your significance is irrelevant to most of the people in this world. I’ve never seen one person in this waiting room go to comfort a stranger or rejoice with them. It’s not something you humans do.
My thoughts are interrupted by a man sitting down. “It’s nothing serious,” his phone shaking in his hand as he spoke to his son, “I’m sure it’s just a bug… yes I’ll let you know.” The man hung up his phone and put his head down in hands, his face pale with fear. The same nurse in purple scrubs entered, “Mr. Adams?” The man rose, masking his fear with a false bravery. A few hours later he returned to me picking up his phone. A worried voice was answered on the other end, “So?” The voice said, Mr. Adam’s cleared his throat, “It’s cancer. I’m sorry son.” The man’s voice stayed calm and clear until he ended his conversation. Mr. Adam rose from his chair and walked to the window. “So this,” he paused looking outside, “This is the beginning of the end.” He stayed like that for a minute then silently walked out the door.
A loud noise pierces through the air. Its an ambulance. A young girl is soon rushed in, wet blood staining her dress, her body battered and bruised. The girl, no older than six years old, was beat and abused by her stepfather frequently. But tonight he had more to drink, he had more anger, more sorrow. Sorrow drives you humans to sad and dark places, but it's more than that. You take others with you.
People come and go, not just out of the waiting room, but out of the world. And I, a chair have a better understanding of just how significant, or insignificant life is than most people. Your next visit to the waiting room may be your last. You simply don't know. So I ask you, next time you sit in a waiting room I want you to think. Who has sat here? What news did they hear? Did they leave in bitter sorrow or with a renewed hope? Who did they lose? When you hold my handles you hold the same handles that the angels in heaven have held. I am the closest you will come to the dead, and your are the closest I will come to the living.
Ashley Heath
DaVinci Academy
Second Place
Grandmother’s Strawberry Jam
Every time I went to my grandmother’s house she and I would always make her famous strawberry jam, even though every time I came she already had a freezer full of the ones we had made last time. It was special for us since I was only able to visit her once or twice a year. She lived far away in the small town of Camden somewhere outside of New York. It is the kind of place where you can ride your four wheeler down the street and people think it is normal. My grandmother and my grandfather owned a large piece of property with no animals but it seemed like my grandad’s tractor collection made up for that.
Everytime I walked into my grandmother’s house I would immediately be hit with a strong smell of cigarette smoke that my mom and sister would always complain about, but me not as much. I got used to the smell; it reminded me of her. When we walked in the house my grandmother would be sitting at the end of the kitchen table in her special rolly chair with her oxygen tank beside her. The sound the oxygen tank was quite annoying at times and at others you would just naturally block it out. I always said it sounded like a dying cat. My grandfather would be asleep in his lazy boy recliner in the living room. The first thing my grandmother would always say is, “Wow you grew so much or I must be shrinking!” She was an old petite woman with grey short curly hair. Her name was Hazel and the name perfectly matched the color of her eyes. Her skin was old and wrinkly with bruises all along her arms from past injuries. My grandfather was a tall, thin man with grey hair who would always be wearing cheap, broken glasses, a white fruit of the loom t-shirt with a red flannel and baggy blue jeans.
We would always be hungry by the time my dad and I got to their house so my grandfather would always have to drive into town to go get Eddie’s spaghetti. As we waited, we would start chopping up some fresh strawberries from the farmers market in town. Since we were in New York the strawberries were not as good as the one you would find in California during the summer time, but somehow they still seemed to work perfectly fine. My grandmother would be singing “a bushel and a peck” or whistling other old music that I had never heard of while she would chop up the strawberries. She was always a great singer in my opinion, not like the ones you would hear on the radio, but that sort of beautiful sound that would remind you of a bird singing at sunrise.
When my grandfather would return with the food we would sit down at the kitchen table, grandma in the special chair at the end of the table and me and my grandad sitting next to her in old wooden chairs with couch cushions tied onto them. My Grandmother would eat the fish dinner, my grandfather would be eating a bowl of cheerios with homemade sweet tea, and the rest of us would be eating spaghetti. As we ate we would watch criminal investigator shows that we would make fun of or old black and white films. We would always be freaking out about how good looking the men in the shows where. Once we were done eating and losing it over the actors we would continue to work on making the jam.
We would take the strawberries we chopped up from earlier and stir them in with a bunch of sugar. My grandmother would always let me try a taste to know it we put enough in. Once it was done cooking we would put it in old mason jars. We would have to throw away a good half of the jars because they were so worn out or had cracks in them. We knew they had been cooled once you heard the tops of the mason jars pop. I never understood why it did that. I always blamed it on some weird science thing that happened to it. While we would wait for that to happen we would take a nap in the living room with my grandad or watch a couple episodes of the Wheel of Fortune. My favorite part of making the jam was being able to eat it afterwards. My grandmother's jam is definitely my favorite out of everything else I’ve ever tried. It isn't because I am being biased, it is because I know how much love was put into making it. It’s not the cheap stuff that you find at the store, or the stuff made in a factory, it was made by my grandmother and me. We would always eat it on a piece of white bread from Wegmans. The jam was sweet but not too sweet to overpower the buttered toast. We would eat about three pieces of toast until we were completely full. By that time my dad would be ready to take me back to my aunt’s house for dinner. Now that my grandmother has passed I always remember the memories we shared spending days laughing and making her famous strawberry jam.
Carlie Crane
DaVinci Academy
Third Place
The Keepsake Shell
My great grandfather had survived WWII and The Korean War bravely serving our country in the U.S. Navy, but now he was gone. He had survived war and selflessly defended the United States but now he had died of sickness. He was fine until doctors decided that they needed to remove something that had been there for a long time. He had lived with it for a while and it hadn’t caused him any harm but they treated it anyway. The treatment took a lot out of him and he got sick and died. We all believe he would still be here if the doctors had just left him alone.
As we all sat, you could feel a deep sadness in the air. I was sitting in a cushioned chair between my mom and my cousin looking through a wall made of glass. I was surrounded by most of my mom’s side of the family. Some of them I knew better than others, but we were all there for the same reason. Sniffs and whimpers could be heard coming from all over the room. While listening to the crying of my family I realized that I would never get to see his face or hear his voice ever again. Although I didn’t see him very often, we were very close. I always loved visiting him and I have so many memories of him. Now, we couldn’t make any more memories.
Through the window you could see three men dressed in military uniforms, each of them holding a gun, ready to salute a fallen soldier. I sat holding back tears while each man raised their gun and shot seven shot through the air. I watched through foggy eyes as twenty-one bullets fell to the ground. Everyone was quiet and in the silence everyone was remembering him. Afterwards, each close relative was given a bullet shell to keep in memory of him. I remember holding that shell in my hand until I got home, never loosening my grip.
That bullet shell has sat on top of my desk since that day. It sits in one of the highest places in my room so that it will never be overlooked or forgotten. Sometimes I look back on moments in my life and realize that I was only thinking of the bad things. I was only complaining. I only thought of myself and how my life “terrible”. I would complain of my feet hurting while people walk for hours each day just to find water. I would whine that I was hungry while children around the world are dying of starvation. Then I realize, I am blessed with people and opportunities that many people only dream of. My life is a blessing and I should be more appreciative of what I have. When I see the bullet shell I am reminded of my great grandad and how he is watching down on me from heaven. As I look at the shell I remember that as long as I remember him, he is never truly gone. I remember that because he was willing to sacrifice himself for our country I can live in a world where I am free. Because of him, I can speak out about my beliefs and live without the worry of losing my freedom. He may be gone physically but what he did for me and my country lives on. He is still here in my heart, keeping me kind and thankful for the blessings in my life.
North Hall Middle School
First Place
The Waiting Room
Tears and disinfectant stain my leather back. My wooden handles are worn down from hundreds of anxious hands. I am surrounded by hushed voices, laughter, and tears. A nurse enters the room, “Mr. Clayton? This way please.” An old man with weary eyes rises. To the left of him a young girl sits on her mother's lap humming to herself. Across from them a man sits staring at his phone. A young couple soon enters the door, the wife hunched over in pain, clenching an injured wrist. Her husband leads her over to me, and she sits down whimpering. Her injured hand lies limp across her lap her other hand grasping my sides. Her husband soon rejoins her, attempting to calm her down. “Shh sweetheart. It’ll be alright.” She nods, choking back tears. After spending an hour in a hospital room she emerges wearing a sling across her arm. She points over to me speaking to her husband, “Can you go grab my purse? I left it in the chair.” Walking over to me he grabs her purse. Somedays it hard to remember that all I am is a chair in the hospital waiting room when I see so much. When I hear and feel the pain of so many.
Hospitals have always been a paradox to me. Across the hall one life can enter the world while another one exits. Over the years I’ve heard people talk about their family members and friends, talking about how quickly children grow up. But I’ve never understood this concept. Humans tend to personify life as something that gets larger the longer you live, when in fact you are only heading closer and closer to death.
I’ve come to adopt a few beliefs from living here for so long. The primary that you will all end up dead. Not to say that I wont, for my weathered frame will end up in a dumpster or fire one day. But to a certain extent, yours will too. Hospitals dont stop your encounters with death, they simply reschedule them. You may wonder, how can this be if life enters through the same doors? And I can tell you simply, every ending must have a beginning.
It’s ten o’clock at night and a woman rushes in, expecting her first child. As the night goes on her family members congregate in the waiting room, all giddy with excitement. Listening to the conversations I learned that the gender of the baby was unknown, as bets were being placed. “It’ll be a boy, and he’ll be a great athlete.” “No no no. It’ll be a girl. You know how badly Eva wants a girl.” I’ve never understood this. Why do people care so much about what gender a child will be? Why not the potential they hold and the things they may accomplish? One of my favorite things is seeing children born here, return to deliver the next generation. But all you humans seem to worry about is what the child will be called and whether they’ll wear pink or blue. At nine o’clock the following morning the family was cooing over baby Taylor. A woman leaned over to her husband, “ I told you Bill. I knew it'd be a girl.” The man called Bill rolled his eyes.
A sense of joy floods over me watching the family rejoicing over the birth of a new human. But I am soon brought back to reality. A woman sits on the opposite side of the room her hands folded in prayer. Her voice comes out quiet and raspy. “ Lord, please don't take my son away. But if it be your will, please allow him to reunite with his father.” Silent tears dripped down her cheeks. A doctor soon enters the waiting room, the lines on his face worn with sorrow. “I’m sorry mam.” The woman put her head down a scream of agony erupting from her chest. But it came from deeper within, it came from her heart. That woman stayed all day, a blank expression etched across her face, the tears all gone. The woman left later that night, walking as though she were a zombie. Listening to the receptionist I learned what had happened to her son. While driving under the influence he had gotten in a fatal car accident. It really is a shame the things that happen. So often people survive these car accidents I hear about, but so often they don't.
As the woman exited a father with a small child entered the waiting room. The girl was coughing, her face red with fever. Her father gently cooed to the child telling her fairy tales while they waited. “ And as the prince slid the glass slipper onto her foot he realized he had found the one. He had found Cinderella.” The girl smiled faintly lying her head across her father's lap. A nurse came out in purple scrubs, “Lily?” The girl now asleep was picked up by her father and carried back. After twenty minutes they went home the girl holding a popsicle.
Everyone seems to have someone here. Except sometimes they don't. Some people enter with a caravan of concerned family and friends. But some people don't. Some people hear those dreaded words, “It’s terminal” holding nothing but the hand of their own fear. That sometimes seems worse than death itself. Though I’ve never had relationships, they seem to be so crucial to you humans. You thrive off of them. They are your foundation. However some people enter this hospital and never exit, and no one would know the difference. Your significance is irrelevant to most of the people in this world. I’ve never seen one person in this waiting room go to comfort a stranger or rejoice with them. It’s not something you humans do.
My thoughts are interrupted by a man sitting down. “It’s nothing serious,” his phone shaking in his hand as he spoke to his son, “I’m sure it’s just a bug… yes I’ll let you know.” The man hung up his phone and put his head down in hands, his face pale with fear. The same nurse in purple scrubs entered, “Mr. Adams?” The man rose, masking his fear with a false bravery. A few hours later he returned to me picking up his phone. A worried voice was answered on the other end, “So?” The voice said, Mr. Adam’s cleared his throat, “It’s cancer. I’m sorry son.” The man’s voice stayed calm and clear until he ended his conversation. Mr. Adam rose from his chair and walked to the window. “So this,” he paused looking outside, “This is the beginning of the end.” He stayed like that for a minute then silently walked out the door.
A loud noise pierces through the air. Its an ambulance. A young girl is soon rushed in, wet blood staining her dress, her body battered and bruised. The girl, no older than six years old, was beat and abused by her stepfather frequently. But tonight he had more to drink, he had more anger, more sorrow. Sorrow drives you humans to sad and dark places, but it's more than that. You take others with you.
People come and go, not just out of the waiting room, but out of the world. And I, a chair have a better understanding of just how significant, or insignificant life is than most people. Your next visit to the waiting room may be your last. You simply don't know. So I ask you, next time you sit in a waiting room I want you to think. Who has sat here? What news did they hear? Did they leave in bitter sorrow or with a renewed hope? Who did they lose? When you hold my handles you hold the same handles that the angels in heaven have held. I am the closest you will come to the dead, and your are the closest I will come to the living.
Ashley Heath
DaVinci Academy
Second Place
Grandmother’s Strawberry Jam
Every time I went to my grandmother’s house she and I would always make her famous strawberry jam, even though every time I came she already had a freezer full of the ones we had made last time. It was special for us since I was only able to visit her once or twice a year. She lived far away in the small town of Camden somewhere outside of New York. It is the kind of place where you can ride your four wheeler down the street and people think it is normal. My grandmother and my grandfather owned a large piece of property with no animals but it seemed like my grandad’s tractor collection made up for that.
Everytime I walked into my grandmother’s house I would immediately be hit with a strong smell of cigarette smoke that my mom and sister would always complain about, but me not as much. I got used to the smell; it reminded me of her. When we walked in the house my grandmother would be sitting at the end of the kitchen table in her special rolly chair with her oxygen tank beside her. The sound the oxygen tank was quite annoying at times and at others you would just naturally block it out. I always said it sounded like a dying cat. My grandfather would be asleep in his lazy boy recliner in the living room. The first thing my grandmother would always say is, “Wow you grew so much or I must be shrinking!” She was an old petite woman with grey short curly hair. Her name was Hazel and the name perfectly matched the color of her eyes. Her skin was old and wrinkly with bruises all along her arms from past injuries. My grandfather was a tall, thin man with grey hair who would always be wearing cheap, broken glasses, a white fruit of the loom t-shirt with a red flannel and baggy blue jeans.
We would always be hungry by the time my dad and I got to their house so my grandfather would always have to drive into town to go get Eddie’s spaghetti. As we waited, we would start chopping up some fresh strawberries from the farmers market in town. Since we were in New York the strawberries were not as good as the one you would find in California during the summer time, but somehow they still seemed to work perfectly fine. My grandmother would be singing “a bushel and a peck” or whistling other old music that I had never heard of while she would chop up the strawberries. She was always a great singer in my opinion, not like the ones you would hear on the radio, but that sort of beautiful sound that would remind you of a bird singing at sunrise.
When my grandfather would return with the food we would sit down at the kitchen table, grandma in the special chair at the end of the table and me and my grandad sitting next to her in old wooden chairs with couch cushions tied onto them. My Grandmother would eat the fish dinner, my grandfather would be eating a bowl of cheerios with homemade sweet tea, and the rest of us would be eating spaghetti. As we ate we would watch criminal investigator shows that we would make fun of or old black and white films. We would always be freaking out about how good looking the men in the shows where. Once we were done eating and losing it over the actors we would continue to work on making the jam.
We would take the strawberries we chopped up from earlier and stir them in with a bunch of sugar. My grandmother would always let me try a taste to know it we put enough in. Once it was done cooking we would put it in old mason jars. We would have to throw away a good half of the jars because they were so worn out or had cracks in them. We knew they had been cooled once you heard the tops of the mason jars pop. I never understood why it did that. I always blamed it on some weird science thing that happened to it. While we would wait for that to happen we would take a nap in the living room with my grandad or watch a couple episodes of the Wheel of Fortune. My favorite part of making the jam was being able to eat it afterwards. My grandmother's jam is definitely my favorite out of everything else I’ve ever tried. It isn't because I am being biased, it is because I know how much love was put into making it. It’s not the cheap stuff that you find at the store, or the stuff made in a factory, it was made by my grandmother and me. We would always eat it on a piece of white bread from Wegmans. The jam was sweet but not too sweet to overpower the buttered toast. We would eat about three pieces of toast until we were completely full. By that time my dad would be ready to take me back to my aunt’s house for dinner. Now that my grandmother has passed I always remember the memories we shared spending days laughing and making her famous strawberry jam.
Carlie Crane
DaVinci Academy
Third Place
The Keepsake Shell
My great grandfather had survived WWII and The Korean War bravely serving our country in the U.S. Navy, but now he was gone. He had survived war and selflessly defended the United States but now he had died of sickness. He was fine until doctors decided that they needed to remove something that had been there for a long time. He had lived with it for a while and it hadn’t caused him any harm but they treated it anyway. The treatment took a lot out of him and he got sick and died. We all believe he would still be here if the doctors had just left him alone.
As we all sat, you could feel a deep sadness in the air. I was sitting in a cushioned chair between my mom and my cousin looking through a wall made of glass. I was surrounded by most of my mom’s side of the family. Some of them I knew better than others, but we were all there for the same reason. Sniffs and whimpers could be heard coming from all over the room. While listening to the crying of my family I realized that I would never get to see his face or hear his voice ever again. Although I didn’t see him very often, we were very close. I always loved visiting him and I have so many memories of him. Now, we couldn’t make any more memories.
Through the window you could see three men dressed in military uniforms, each of them holding a gun, ready to salute a fallen soldier. I sat holding back tears while each man raised their gun and shot seven shot through the air. I watched through foggy eyes as twenty-one bullets fell to the ground. Everyone was quiet and in the silence everyone was remembering him. Afterwards, each close relative was given a bullet shell to keep in memory of him. I remember holding that shell in my hand until I got home, never loosening my grip.
That bullet shell has sat on top of my desk since that day. It sits in one of the highest places in my room so that it will never be overlooked or forgotten. Sometimes I look back on moments in my life and realize that I was only thinking of the bad things. I was only complaining. I only thought of myself and how my life “terrible”. I would complain of my feet hurting while people walk for hours each day just to find water. I would whine that I was hungry while children around the world are dying of starvation. Then I realize, I am blessed with people and opportunities that many people only dream of. My life is a blessing and I should be more appreciative of what I have. When I see the bullet shell I am reminded of my great grandad and how he is watching down on me from heaven. As I look at the shell I remember that as long as I remember him, he is never truly gone. I remember that because he was willing to sacrifice himself for our country I can live in a world where I am free. Because of him, I can speak out about my beliefs and live without the worry of losing my freedom. He may be gone physically but what he did for me and my country lives on. He is still here in my heart, keeping me kind and thankful for the blessings in my life.