Here He Lives - a writing prompt

Writing prompt:  a doctor, a car, and a blanket.  A gas station.

HERE HE LIVES

The Doctor took up his cigarette and pressed the car lighter to its tip.   He inhaled sharply and looked down the bridge of his nose as it illuminated in glorious red embers.   He deposited the lighter back into its slot, never taking his eyes off of the cigarette as he inhaled a tuft of smoke, and released it out of the free corner of his mouth.   He hadn't even twisted the key to turn the engine into starting.   He was simply alone in the dead of winter watching the small fire burn at the end of his paper.

The Doctor turned the keys then after closing his eyes and enjoying the sludge of additives that were filling his lungs.   His mother used to chastise him - when she was alive - that he should know better as a medical professional.  She would ask him if seeing all those x-rays, and scans, and deaths meant anything to him.   She wondered why that never gave him pause and he wondered right back why every other doctor hadn't picked up this habit.  He didn't understand how anyone dealt with all this shit and didn't smoke.  He inhaled and this time removing the cigarette first exhaled.   He twisted the heating nob on his console and set to defrost the lightly crystalline windshield, which was a shame because in its killing frost he saw a beautiful painting.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes with a greasy fist.   The only kind where sweat was the culprit and not edibles.   Just the stress on his human body, and the uncontrollable urge to sweat under controlled precision.  His body always betrayed that.   No matter how absorbed and orderly he seemed, his pores opened up floodgates and he kept gowns and gloves in ready supply.   After another exhale with cigarette between fingers he looked at the cracked skin over each knuckle, down each digit.   He envisioned his flesh eroding till a tenderloin of muscle stared back up at him.  Thin meat for bulky hands, and then eventually as the winds of degradation continued to skim from him his exteriors, and interiors he would be left with but a frail skeletal hand, and all brittle and hard, until it evaporated into the air like dust and nothingness.

The Doctor shifted into reverse and placed his cigarette hand on the top of his passenger seat and removed his vehicle from its place.   He moved to drive and twisted his wheel sporadically to one side with his one good hand and placed his foot to the floor.  The staff parking lot was nearly empty at that hour of night, or at least empty of people.   The cars were like gravestones waiting for their occupants.  Heavy pieces of metals sitting in silences and condolences against the loss of the occupants they had left behind to double shifts and call ins as they were almost out.

The Doctor found his way out onto the road.

The Doctor drove for some time along those early morning roads.   Where street lamps and stop lights held more use as decorations than guiding beacons.  No one was out to use them as such, most were tucked cozy upon their beds.   Most were working third shifts or on their way home from heavy drinking.  He hoped safely, if not they still were under heavy white lights on one of the ER tables, or in the morgue stuffed inside cold lockers where, well, they had no use for lights at all.

The Doctor took a glance into his rear view mirror and paused.   A cold green blanket with a picture of that mean green Hulk character twisted about it as though in floral patterns.  He quickly adjusted the mirror to its proper position as he puffed out the last drag of smoke he could from the side of his mouth.   He stubbed out the butt into the ashtray, and betrayed himself another glance into the mirror but saw in them only the pattered look of blinking cautions lights, as if synchronized into a pattern of their blinking yellows.  He didn't have to see the blanket though to know it was there.  He sympathized with its protagonists, pissed off and raging but he didn't have to see them because they were imprinted  on the back of his mind.  It was always going to be too.

The Doctor reached for his cigarette pack but knew the empty feeling that was awaiting him when now more than the past twenty hours of screaming and studying calm through sweaty palms had ever required.   He crumpled the pack in his fist and threw it against the floor.   A Mobil sign was illuminated ahead of him and he knew his poison could be found inside, and all he had to do was interact with one tired third shift attendant who was usually taking stock of the store when bastard customers came in to bother them.

The Doctor twisted his steering wheel.

The Doctor found his way to the empty space closest to the door.

The Doctor bought the cigarettes, he paid the attendant and he inhaled sharply at the lit stick.

The Doctor drove away, he would be alone at home tonight, the blanket a reminder.   It'd been back there for months, and for months his wife had left him, and for months he'd worked as much as he could.

The Fatherless can seldom reclaim that identity and nor that of Husband.  The Doctor was what he was, this was his identity, this and nothing else.   He drove back home, to some empty closet in the hospital, there was nothing waiting for him in that brick townhouse.  Nothing but the silence of loss, and the echoes of grief.   He would never face them if it wasn't necessary, he would choose instead to wallow in other peoples tears, and other peoples rage.  He would be their blankets.   His mind wandered to the child blanket, green, and mean, and he mumbled in half dead words, "Me too.  Me too."