The Summer of Yes

by Courtney Walsh

After he walks out, the doctor comes in to talk with the crash test dummy in the bed across from mine.

After a beat, she says, “I wish I’d said yes more.” She looks at me. “To the fun things of life, you know? I always chose work over everything. It suited me. But it cost me too. Nothing comes without a cost, young lady, and only you can decide if you’re willing to pay it.”

For years, I’d hear old women lamenting the speed of things as they looked at photos of years gone by. That babies grow up in a blink. They turned around and—boom!—it was thirty years later. I don’t want life to go by in a blink. Not anymore.

“Are you going to smile the whole time?” I retort. “Maybe I am,” she says with a crazed look on her face. I bite back a smile of my own. She may be certifiable, but there is something to admire there. Could just be that she’s a lunatic.

But Hayden still said I was beautiful. Beautiful. And I feel the compliment all the way to my toes. I stumble over a “Thanks, um, so do you,” because I’m aspiring to be a writer.