I'll keep this fairly short, as my comments are just going to echo what others have already said (lose Beth, lose the ad-lib). You definitely need to show the Mary/Helen relationship more, as this will provide the emotional impact that is currently lacking. Even if we were to just see Mary looking at photos of her and Helen together, it would create some kind of bond between them that doesn't exist at present.

In the past I've visited both my grandmothers in nursing homes before they passed on, and you certainly captured the sad and depressing felling that they create.

Congratulations on a solid effort.

My thoughts;

# I think it has potential and would echo others that this could be longer, whereas many posted so far could have been shorter!
# I would remove the bed pan scene. After reading this, I was trying to relate it back to the core story.
# otherwise well written

All the best.

Read it.

Flowed nice, seems like the writer knows what their doing.

Story wise like some others here Im a bit confused (Could be cause Im tired from working all night lol). But it captures the depressed mood those places can have.

I assume she got the bed sore from being on the bed pan so long?

Either way good job on getting it done.

First of all, doctors don't hang out in hospitals much. It's the truth. Except emergency room doctors and then there's the doctors just doing their morning rounds, but once that's over, you'd be hard pressed to find one.

It's likely that a nurse would drain the bed sore although I didn't think that was necessary at all for this.

I was confused by the introduction of the name Helen. Helen? Who's she? I had to do some re-reading to piece it together.

This can be a well done piece with some tweaking.

Sandra

Sorry couldn't read this but felt it only fair to tell you why - the first page was a bit close to home and couldn't clear the memory.
Daz

Like Pia, I'm 99% sure I know who wrote this one.  

Like others have said, you could get rid of Barbara... or I think you could keep her in and have everyone know that Helen was the mother's favorite and Barbara was always standing in her shadow.

Anyway, I think this one was done quickly, but I think it could be a really good piece after taking time for a rewrite.

I felt bad for the grandmother on page 2 with the bed pan and sore.

I'd like to see her happy though. Maybe from old memories, a piece of jewelery from Helen, something.

Good job for the OWC. Just needs some tweaking.

Cindy

While it was certainly the most realistic OWC I have read so far (not very difficult after scripts about people swapping bodies and being killed with dildos), but while it had this grounding in reality, it failed to do much for me. I didn't feel anything for the characters, they were just names on a sheet of paper.

And the end just left me confused. I read it three times, and still am not sure what's supposed to have been going on! I felt I was missing something, some vital piece of information that would have made it make sense.

Maybe it's because I am tired?

As I go:

Page 3:  Barbara comes off a little TOO unreasonable to me, which impedes the drama of this scene to a certain extent.
I'm hoping a point emerges soon and we're not just wallowing in melodrama.

Thoughts:

Nah.  Writing's fine, characters are reasonable.  Drama's toothless, though.  There's no arc to this story and no action from its protagonist.  It's a steady downward -- well, slip -- and those aren't fun in real life.  Nor, it seems, are they fun when summed up for film.

The idea is to say something about the tragedy, not just show it.  It's the tapestry of the story and its meaning that's gonna make the sadness hit home, not the bedpan business.

Don't mean to sound overly critical here as the writing is strong and clear.

Thanks for the good read!

Good job, on this one, but in my opinion, the logline gives away the plot.

The characters are very interesting although there might be too many of them .

What I really like are Mary's reactions, everything about Mary is done so well, I encourage you to write more stories with the same kind of setting and characters.

The writing was pretty good here. I am also dumbfounded by its ending. Didn't get who Helen was. Will look forward to the writer's explanation. 99% of the time, if a writer has to explain to his audience, they've not written their script clearly enough. Expect this to be in that percentile.

James

Hmm, not really sure what I think about this one. One thing, tho, my mom used to work in a hospital and I know for a fact that a doctor wouldn't insert a catheter.

Good effort, tho

I liked the deliberate pace of this and the overall feel. However, the story seemed to lack focus. It seems like it's about the loneliness and abysmal existence of being an old person in a hospital, but then it turns out it's about a death in the family. In the end, I didn't think either one of them resonated because of that.

Not bad at all, but couldn't get a proper grip on it.

It seemed a little heavy-handed to me. The emotion inherent in the story was never really teased out. This would've worked better as one flowing scene, IMO. You can cover the range of emotions with a tense single scene. By changing it up and introducing the doctor, you were losing any sense of pacing. What are the core elements of this story? What will make people invest in it? Giving a bit more thought over a rewrite will help bring these elements to the fore.

Whilst you touched on the motivations for withholding the information, it's never imbued via the actions and that's why you left me indifferent to what could be a touching story.

Okay, so now that the reveal's been made, I can clarify my script The idea was to show how both the loss of Mary's dignity and her daughter triggered the onset of Alzheimers. Of course, I need to work on this to get it up to scratch, but all your comments have really helped me know what to do, so thanks

Anyway, this was my second short and the result of a last minute idea, 3 hours of writing time, and 4 screaming kids in the background. And as you could probably guess from my earlier comment, I realized pretty quickly after submitting it some of the mistakes that have been mentioned.

Thanks again! I'll rewrite and resubmit

Nice work, Rebekah. Seemed like a veteran writer to me! But then, I'm a newb too. I like your writing style.