THE WALK-AND-TALK
In Which Morleen Trapp Attempts a Soft Confrontation, and Elias Performs a Performance He No Longer Recognizes as Performance
These are the serialized accounts for the novella, Working Terms. All tasks are mandatory. All emotions are optional. Welcome to your role in the system.
FROM THE LAST → While reviewing clinical documentation metrics, Lucinda Quell discovers a technician whose charting reads like quiet literature—personal, precise, and strangely alive. What begins as a variance audit becomes a revelation: a hidden voice mapping the emotional landscape of care. Morleen Trapp “schedules” a walk-and-talk to address the issue.
The meeting had not been scheduled, per se. That would have implied formality, stakes, and a paper trail. Instead, it was initiated the way certain fevers begin: subtly, then suddenly, with heat.
Morleen Trapp located Elias mid-shift outside a med room, bent over a clipboard, in the posture of someone actively pretending not to have been interrupted. She greeted him with an upward nod and a tight half-smile, the kind issued by people too tired to disguise suspicion as friendliness.
“Rigg,” she said, with the precise degree of neutral vocal tilt used by managers before the word concerned is introduced.
“Trapp,” Elias replied brightly. “If this is about the syringes, I can explain—”
“It’s not,” she said. “Walk with me.”
He fell into step beside her, instinctively shortening his stride to match hers. This, too, he had practiced.
The walk-and-talk, as practiced by Trapp, was a sanctioned ritual. It functioned as a psychological audit disguised as exercise. It was one part observational feedback, one part territorial claim, and two parts plausible deniability. No emails. No memos. Just a hallway and a man too disoriented to lie efficiently.
“I’ve been reviewing some of your notes,” she said, without turning her head.
“Ah,” Elias said. “My greatest hits.”
“I’m not sure what you’re doing.”
“That makes two of us.”
A pause.
“I mean your documentation,” she clarified. “It’s ... expanded.”
“You mean thorough.”
“No. Expanded.”
They passed an unoccupied nurse’s station. A monitor flickered. A hallway printer groaned. Somewhere down the corridor, a patient yelled, “I SAID GRAHHHHAAAM CRACKERS, GODDAMN IT,” with the volume of spiritual urgency.
Trapp continued.
“Your entries are ... exhaustive. They feel ... textured.”
“I’ve been moisturizing.”
“I mean narratively.”
“Ah.”
Elias made a face of mock-consternation and then dropped it, replacing it with something that looked—if you squinted hard enough—like a confession in progress.
“It helps me remember what happened,” he said. “In case someone else forgets.”
“That’s not your job.”
“But it’s available.”
She stopped walking. They were now in the sterile corridor between the overflow telemetry rooms and the room no one used for staff meetings anymore because of the incident.
Trapp turned to face him. She looked at his eyes. Then his badge. Then, accidentally, at his mouth.
“You used the phrase ‘ambient sorrow’ in a chart.”
Elias considered this.
“I did,” he said. “It felt accurate.”
“It’s not a billable symptom.”
“Neither is dread. But it shows up.”
There was a moment—short, interior, and utterly devastating—where Trapp nearly said what she meant:
“You’re being noticed.”
“Stop before they decide what you are.”
“I don’t want to see you on a committee.”
“I’ve been you, and it doesn’t end well.”
Instead, she said: “Tone matters, Rigg.”
To which Elias replied, without affect: “So does silence.”
With that, the walk ended.
She left him by the elevator bank. He watched the doors open and close for three full minutes without entering, then scribbled a note in his pocket pad:
Walk-and-talk today. Trapp concerned about tone. Failed to define concern. Elevator offered no direction.
UP NEXT → THE FIRST STRANGE NOTE: In Which Elias Writes a Simple Entry That Accidentally Becomes Literature, or Maybe a Manifesto
If anything here made you laugh, think, or rage-nod in agreement, consider tapping the support button and donating a buck or two.
Subscribing allows you to skip the search and get it sent right to your inbox.
I’m keeping this free because that feels right. If you want to support it anyway, out of some quiet belief in people making things, there’s a button for that. There are no special perks, just the work and a “thank you.”