Hiya, this is an idea that follows on from a thread I made on the discussion forum, as I thought it might be fun to have some writing prompts!

The prompt is a one-word one, as I find those to be the most versatile and interesting.

The word I picked for this thread is 'vessel'.

I'm going to post my interpretation of the prompt below this as a 'chapter 2', so that my submission doesn't sway anyone's ideas on what to write, and hope you guys will get involved with your own takes on the prompt by adding new chapters/story paths below! Credit to SepiandDust for the general idea of how this is all set out :)

• Riot45

Sprinting outside, muscles on fire from running so hard. Collapsing in a bush, sharp twigs and thorns scraping the skin, small dots of crimson blood welling in from the deep. Like HIS blood, in the tangled hollow tubes snaking around his body. Nonononono must get away must get away must get away.

Must get away from the hospital.

Staggering up. Running and running and running. Stopping. Sitting on the floor. Curling into a ball, stuffing a wad of the white coat into the mouth. No. Not white. It used to be white, now sprinkled with HIS blood. Screaming into the cloth...

I remember a sentence from a song: I think I'm burning alive but nobody sees the fire.

But this time, I'm not burning alive, I'm drowning in a sea of crimson, drowning in the hollow, twisted tubes, drowning in the blood vessels... But nobody sees the blood, only me.

I laughed.

A surgeon. What was I thinking of? That I can handle the blood? That I can handle the fact that, if something goes wrong, the patient might die?

Die... What a strange word. With different meanings layered to it.

Die means screaming until your vocal chords are ripped and torn apart, means slimy, steaming guts spilling out, means blood spilling onto the floor, raw slabs of human flesh...

I choked and vomited, falling down, face in the puddle, oranges and yellows and browns swirling around the substance. Groaning and moving to another spot, sticky vomit still on my face. lying down and waiting for the morning. Thoughts of the blood vessels still in my head...

Head throbbing, legs pumping as I will myself to go faster. The sensation of skin peeling from skin as my arms straighten, elbows caked in dried sweat and vomit. Have to get away. Have to be gone from here. My tongue still tastes like bitter dirt, cold coffee. I remember that. Cold and bitter on my tongue, and I'd drunk it anyway because Dr. Reeves was waiting and I couldn't show up with shaking hands.

Mr Chen layon the table. Routine valve replacement. Simple. I'd assisted on a dozen of these. I can do this, I'd told myself in the scrub room, watching the nurses arrange instruments with mechanical precision. You've trained for this.

When we wheeled him past the waiting room, his daughter grabbed the rail and his eyes found hers over the surgical mask. Love and terror braided together. He was terrified. Everyone knows. You sign the consent form; you know death is on that table with you.

The incision was clean. I was good at clean. The ribs cracked open like a locked door, a sound I'd become numb to, or so I thought. Reeves nodded at me. Encouraging. I had the retractors. Blood pooled. It always pools. That's normal. Then his heart started fibrillating, a chaotic electrical storm in his chest, and all of us suddenly moving in that strange, accelerated time that happens in code situations. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have--

Reeves's voice: "Where's the bleed?"

I was looking, eyes travelling up the length of his exposed arteries like little rubbery snakes. A tiny, impossibly small nick sat in the left coronary artery. I'd made that nick. Me. My hand, my retractor, one small movement that was supposed to be nothing.

"Get me a stitch," Reeves said, and her voice was steady as she fixed it, she fixed it. But the heart wouldn't come back. They called it. Time of death 11:47 a.m.

And his daughter was still in that waiting room.