Many thanks to Morgan Talty for choosing my flash fiction story, “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five,” for the Fractured Lit Anthology 4 Contest. 

The story comes out twice: online today, and in a print anthology which will be published next spring.

It’s always gratifying to be published but it’s especially thrilling to know that one of your writing heroes has read and selected your work. Morgan Talty’s short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, wrecked me so thoroughly, I can remember exactly where I was (in my parents’ house in Maine) when I finished the last story. I can’t wait to read his debut novel, just out with Tin House.

I drafted “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five” about one year into my first job as a family nurse practitioner. I had awkwardly tried to ask one of my mentors whether or not there was a list of things I should be doing when people shared great traumas with me. I was very new to primary care and was routinely horrified at my own position of authority, and was hoping that medicine, a field which adores algorithms, might have a flowchart for me. My mentor did that thing where you ask for a resource and they reply, what a great idea, why don’t you make one. It was yet another moment of me realizing that medicine was not magic and the guidance I was looking for, if it existed, was not readily available. I also started writing a tongue-in-cheek protocol. The story didn’t grow legs until after I revised it several times over several years, finally leaning into the surreal. Which, on further reflection, is sort of closer to what most medical providers are taught to do: oh, you’re exposed to trauma? Have you tried leaving your body?

Thanks, Fractured Lit. Thanks, Morgan Talty.