Yvette~ By Isabelle Stillman

There is a Nurse Practitioner named Yvette. When people come into her office, she asks them to sit in a small black chair and place their things on the desk. Then she sits at the desk facing away from the black chair toward the computer and asks them things like, do you use tobacco, do you have family members with heart disease or cancer or respiratory trouble, do you have a safe sexual relationship, do you think you might be pregnant, do you have regular bowel movements, do you wear your seatbelt, do you share needles, are you allergic to any medications, do you have any friends, and inputs the answers into the computer. Because the computer software in which she inputs the answers is slow and because Yvette does not like when the room is silent and the person is looking at her from behind and because Yvette has a habit of whispering instead of talking, Yvette repeats the person’s answers in a small voice until the next question loads on her computer screen and she can ask it. And so the people sitting in the black chair hear over and over, “normal bowels” “normal bowels” “normal bowels or “cancer” “cancer” “cancer.”


Author Bio:
​Isabelle Stillman is a writer, teacher, and musician from St. Louis, Missouri. She began writing as a young girl, studied fiction through college and graduate school, and taught creative writing to high schoolers. Her most recent writing endeavor has been that of writing songs – Isabelle released her first full-length album, Middle Sister, in July of 2019. She then quit her job to go on tour. Her fiction and songwriting both explore ideas about coming of age, gender, mental health, and religion. In the classroom, she teaches writing as a vehicle for students to see the world in all its realities and to carve their individual space within it. Isabelle’s music is available on all streaming platforms; this is her first published piece of fiction.