In an Instant

Cause and effect. In a nanosecond.

The headline flashes across my screen: a pilot reportedly ate psychedelic mushrooms and then tried to crash a plane. It reverberates in my head — how a tiny thing, a mere tinkering of the equation, could cause a dramatic change.

Wow. I slide down in my chair.

Then I glance at the screen again. The sea of seventy-two unopened emails is still there. Get back to the job search. I sit up.

Click. Bills and junk mail. Then a job rejection, another generic “thanks but no thanks.” I regret having even bothered to open it. It’s just like all the others. Unemployment is so depressing. I long for change, but after almost three months, my fingers feel like lead on the keyboard.

My concentration darts around, resisting an almost magnetic pull toward travel news and shopping sites. It lands back at the headline about the pilot. Instantaneous change. A split second in time, and life is completely different. Not just moving the pawn one space, but tossing the chessboard across the room, pieces sailing in the air. “After” might not bear any resemblance to “before.” All because of one little movement, one minuscule catalyst.

I open Word on my laptop and challenge myself to think of other scenarios that fit that concept.

“Example 1: When he left the house that morning, he was a well-respected surgeon. After being served divorce papers upon arriving at the hospital — an act that lasted a mere ten seconds — he was still rattled during the operation an hour later. His hand slipped, then his reputation slipped, and his shining career evaporated.”

This exercise amuses me. I continue to type.

“Example 2: When she roared down the street in her twenty-year-old Toyota, late for work again, with her Diet Coke can sloshing in the drink holder, her blue mascara rolled off the seat. As she reached down to pick it up, she plowed into the Mercedes stopped at the red light. The math had yet to hit her: subtract one old car and then add one huge repair bill at the high-end body shop.”

I lean back from the screen, snickering. Indeed, a small misstep could wreak havoc. But a positive outcome is possible, too.

“Example 3: When her nausea sent her to the bathroom stall at the office three times, she cursed last night’s shrimp appetizer that her husband had sent back as tasting peculiar. Then she remembered that she hadn’t eaten the shrimp. She popped into Walgreens, bypassing the “digestive aids” aisle, and came home with a tidy little paper bag. She stared at the two little lines on the pregnancy test and ended her day with ecstatic screams.”

Ah, this is good. Therapeutic even.

But I really need a job.

I refocus on the list of remaining emails. Eastside Auto Repair, Waggin’ Tail Pet Supply, Patient Portal, Safeway, Desert — Patient Portal? I move the cursor to hover over that email. The subject line reads, “You have a new lab result.”

I don’t click. I don’t want to click. I know it’s the result from the breast biopsy. The email font is tiny, but it seems ten feet tall. Menacing.

Hold on. It could be good news. Breast lumps in young women are usually negative.

But not necessarily if your mom died of breast cancer. Oh, God, this could be the start of surgery, chemo, radiation. I’m going to die.

My hand curls over the mouse.

Then the phone rings. The caller ID on my watch says it’s the recruiter at the Winged Travel Company. Grrr. Go away. You put me through four interviews and still took the other person. Why would you be calling me now? First choice didn’t work out, huh? Serves you right.

The ringing is coming from downstairs. Damn, why’d I leave it down there? I jump up, tipping over my coffee mug. The lukewarm liquid splashes onto the laptop. “Oh, shit!” I grab a handful of Kleenex and try to blot the milky mess. The screen goes black. Now how am I supposed to read that email?

Go get the phone!

I run down the stairs, slip on the lustrous dark wood, miss the last two steps, smash into the wall, and land — splat! — on the ivory tile floor, clutching my wrist in throbbing pain.

Four hours later, the orthopedic tech wraps my left arm in a glossy, neon-pink cast. With my right hand, I reach for my phone and click it open. How quickly things happen. First the dead computer, then the broken wrist. What now? Do I listen to the voicemail, which could be good, or read the email, which could be either good or bad?

It’s a moment of choice, and I feel its power.

Blink. Life has already changed.

Susan Golden writes fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harmony Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, Medicine and Meaning, Washington Square Review LCC, Remington Review, The Human Touch, and The Write Launch.