thirdspace

2018 Annual Short Fiction Contest Winner: "God's Hands"

by Stewart Massad, MD

In August of his last year of medicine residency, Dr. Delisle had been assigned to a Catholic hospital’s intensive care unit. It was kung fu medicine: new-minted ward interns pitched desperate cases; he parried them back—or to the morgue.

2018 Annual Short Fiction Contest Runner-Up: "Invitations"

Invitations

by Carole Glasser Langille

What was most evident about Miriam when she was a child was the gloom that enveloped her. Perhaps it was her unhappiness swathing her like fog, more than her small, squinting eyes or doughy skin that made her appear homely.

Orchiectomy

by Amber Bard

There have been a lot of medical students in the news lately for filling sham prescriptions on behalf of their teachers, the attending physicians who judge their daily performance in the hospitals and determine their futures with letters of recommendation or non-recommendation.

Vein Cutter

by Loreen Niewenhuis

Carly had not known what the job was – even what the word meant – when she read the ad in the paper for a phlebotomist. She just saw that they offered training and some benefits, it was part-time, early mornings, and paid twice as much as her job at the mall.

Gross Anatomy

by Elizabeth Parker Garcia

Dead silence.
The med students surrounding me stood, slouched yet tense. They avoided making eye contact with each other almost as much as they avoided looking at the white-draped corpses.
The professor broke the silence, her voice cold and sterile as the room’s steel tables and tile floors.