I speak English. I can read Spanish, Italian, French, and German.
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Child (5-12)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
the gown a short story by Emily Autumn. Oh no, dear! Said the nurse. The ties go in the back, said the little girl. Really? Are you sure? The girl's chest was bared, her stomach showing plane through two sets of string ties that held the gown loosely together. And yet for all the absurdity in it, this present humiliation was more comprehensible to her. Then the equal exposure of her backside, Such vulnerability wasn't cool. By the time the doctor entered the examination room, six minutes and 23 seconds later the girl had put the gun right. She had taken her place on the examining table as a means to hide her near nakedness. Prior to this arrival, the thin waxy paper covering the table stuck to the backs of her thighs, crinkling loudly as she attempted to pull the gown more snugly behind her and she thought how much it was like the paper that the meat weighed out on and wrapped up inside of the butcher counter. Her mother's shopped at on Sundays when the chicken was half price Because it was four days old. It was to be only a routine examination just to check, Followed by the influenza vaccination that every 12 year old was required to undergo prior to the start of the school term. She had been to the doctor before, of course, but she had always been allowed to keep her own clothes on Once when she was three. They had taken off her jumper just to check her heartbeat. She remembered this quite clearly. The jumper had been blue, but that was all. She had never been ordered to put on the gown until today, and as soon as she held the thin cloth in her hands, white and pattern all over with pale blue diamond shapes. Everything in the little room seemed to different. The examination table looked longer and somehow challenging, like an empty stage. When she hopped up and sat upon the edge felt harder than she remembered, despite the thin padding beneath the paper, the tools arranged so neatly upon the steel tray set squarely on the countertop looked sharp and heavy, and she knew that if she touched them they would be cold. Fluorescent lights above her head flickered in an irritating way she had never noticed before, and they emitted a faint buzzing sound that confused her mind and hurt the very insights of her ears. When the doctor glanced at her, his eyes did not look kind as she was sure they had when she was smaller. As he approached her. She felt shy, painfully shy for the first time in her life. Back to school, said the doctor as he lifted his stethoscope to his ears, without waiting for an answer. The doctor told her to take a deep breath in the metal was ice upon her back, breaking her out into goose flesh. She felt embarrassed by her reaction, ashamed of her lack of control over her own skin. She hoped the doctor hadn't noticed in agony. She breathed three more times and felt the tears pricking at the insides of her island. The doctor then moved around to her front where he hit her on the knee with his rubber mallet and made her kick a silly stupid kid. What on earth is this? Were she wondered what could the doctor possibly tell about her from this ridiculous little kick she wanted to ask, but I felt sure that if she spoke her voice would come out all jittery that she would give away how cold she was. How painfully cold the air now upon her exposed back was at the time and she didn't want the doctor to know how uncomfortable she felt. Besides, it didn't really matter what the rubber mallet proved did it? It wouldn't change anything about her life if she knew. The doctor seemed to be satisfied with her eyes, her ears, her nose. And now he took a syringe from a paper wrapper and told her to make a fist with her left hand looking down at her arm. She saw why she saw why he had told her this. For her veins pale and blue and twisting, shown more vividly to the surface. As she began to clench her hand she curled her fingers into her palm, pressed her thumb across them tightly and tried to feel strong. She imagined having to fight someone who approached her from behind who saw her exposed as she was. And as she felt the fear creep up and over her bare shoulders where her gown was slipping away, she squeezed her fist harder still before she knew that it had gone in, the needle was being drawn out and the doctor was reaching to a steel tray for a cotton pad. As his back was turned, a single drop of blood fell from her arm to the ground below, just above her left knee. She looked up quickly to see if the doctor had noticed he had not. As he swiveled around to her and moved to take the cotton pad over the puncture its skin. She covered the blood spot with her right hand. The doctor rose and walked to the door. You can go ahead and get dressed now, he said, without looking at her, You're all set until next year. She looked down to where her hands still covered the spot on the gown. She prayed to God that when she removed her hand the spot would be gone, but it was still there. She felt panic then, and hurried to the little sink and ran the cold water a weak stream, so that no one would hear cold water for blood. She'd once heard someone say this, she could not remember who cold water for blood, who in her life would have said that. She looked at the hem of the gown to the sink, her backside was completely exposed now and she looked at the door to see if there was a lock there was, but if she locked the door and someone were to try to come in, she couldn't lock the door, she would simply have to hurry. Cold water for blood. She thought this must get it out. Must as the stream of water hit the thin material. The spot only grew in size as if she were still bleeding onto the fabric. She felt her heartbeat quicken. She rubbed the spot with her fingers faster and faster until it faded slightly, but it would not be made gone. And now it was even larger where the spot had first begun. eight pale blue diamonds away from the side seam of the gown And 13 diamonds up from the hem. Now it was only four diamonds from the side seam and 9.5 from the him. She had meant only to wet the bit of the gown that carried the spot, but as she turned off the faucet and wrung out the fabric, she felt her face go hot all over where the wetness it spread, and the whole lower half of the gown was soaked. Her arms felt suddenly weak, the gown hanging heavy about her legs, now making her knees wet and cold. She must hide it. She must hide this horrible thing! This hideous thing! This shameful thing! She pulled it off over her head without undoing the ties and her pulse pounded in her ears as she looked frantically around the little room for a place to hide the gown. But there was nowhere that wouldn't be found right away. She needed time time for other patients to come in out of the room so that when the gun was finally found it might be said to have belonged to anyone. Then she heard footsteps in the hall, she turned back to the examination table, the thin padding that covered it, and before she could think better of it, she crumpled the gown into the smallest bundle she could and stuffed it beneath the padding. How stupid! She thought that was the wrong thing! I ought to have thrown it in the trash. But the footsteps were nearly at the door and it was too late. She rushed to pull on her dress just in time for the not to turn