Welcome to the twelfth and final post of the “12 Days of Fiction” series, where a volunteer writer is assigned a random writing prompt from the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” All writing on the prompt must be done in 10 minutes or less.

Volunteers have been cultivated through the original 12 Days of Fiction invite, the Catholic Writers Guild members-only Facebook page, my Facebook page… and I think that’s it. Thanks to Random.org for the random number generator.

And now, at long last, let’s welcome back Kimberly Hartman, who is drumming us through the final prompt!  Thanks, Kimberly, and all our improv writers! I really enjoyed how each writer found his or her own way to interpret the song lines that we take for granted almost into new and fresh ideas–and writing them didn’t have to take a large chunk of your time.

This has been so much fun that I am looking into posting a regular writing prompt linkup.  Would that be of interest?  

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“They Will Keep Drumming”

by Kimberly Hartman

He’d already had the 10 minutes of terror, and was looking forward to the 50 minutes of sheer boredom that everybody was talking about. The new guy always had the worst shift, he grinned to himself wryly. At least he could could relax for a min – “got five more coming in.” Said the nurse on comm.

“Can’t they be diverted– We got our hands full.”

“They are being diverted – to us.”

“K, I hear the first one” he ran so fast that they often said he left his hair color behind him. The triage nurse called in sick so he was doubling on that too. “Keep them moving steady.”

“Okay head injury 08. Alright okay Pneumothorax okay, 06. This one, broken femur, 09, keep the CPR going on that one, Crash cart to 11, don’t want to lose him. This one to 12, catch that medic alert wristband.”

ERs always sounded calmer in real life, than they were on TV. Order so quickly executed that they could’ve been chaos. All 12 rooms full, but none lost yet; on the edge but all hearts still beating, still drumming. If he had any say, and God be with him and his team, they would keep drumming.

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