Here's the short story I was blathering about in the previous post. It is waaaaay longer than what I've intentionally planned, since I was aiming to consume only a single page if and when it gets published in the Nursing Journal. This crude first draft is composed of 2,037 words. I dream of cutting it to a mere 1,500-1,800. Help me achieve this dream by telling me which lines/paragraphs/sentences can be omitted. I am quite an indecisive and vain little monkey: I want to shorten it, but I've sort of fallen in love with my words like they're my children, so I need someone's objective advice. And yeah, tell me please if the names of the characters worked for you. And if the plot did as well.