Week 5 Writing Homework
- November 14, 2024
- 11:33 am
- 47 Comments
Writing Homework :
Using the story starter provided, craft a narrative about a pivotal day when Rick’s two worlds collide
during a caisson emergency. Show how his engineering knowledge and familial loyalty intertwine
in a moment of crisis. Focus on the physical and emotional pressure he experiences, using the bridge
itself as a metaphor for the connections he tries to build between his two worlds.
Submit your homework as comment below:
Please upload your homework as a comment below:
47 thoughts on “Week 5 Writing Homework”
hi, homework again
Rick (1)
This is the right one
Ethan
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Ethan Lee- FEEDBACK
These words were the favourite of his dad. Son, bridges are in your DNA. He could bet $1 every time, his dad said that his friends would tease him when he had gone. It was annoying, the Sanders family, had all been bridge workers, but he had different plans, he wanted to be an engineer. Yes, though it wouldn’t feel too good to break the family tradition, he really really wanted to be an engineer.
Rick has had a terrible backstory, his mum’s heart had failed at birth, and if he had pulled out a second later, he wouldn’t have made it. His dad was also terribly sick, always having to deal with the sooty air in the tunnels. With nearly everyone having polio didn’t help either. Rick was self-taught speaking, manners and how to walk. It was hard, but he was instantly zoomed out by a fit of coughing.
It was his dad, but it was worse, it was like he was on his deathbed. As his breathing turned husky, his last words were. Son, bridges are in you. Tears fell onto his dad as he took his final breath. Rick couldn’t look anymore. He dug a grave, and put his father inside. It honestly wasn’t as bad as he thought, but possibly, because he didn’t do anything to affect his life in a good way. He thought for just a second, can I do both?
He thought and he thought can I do both? He thought for days on end, until he figured it out. Why not, be an engineer for a bridge. Then, he worked, he wanted it to be sci-fi, but also original. He thought of the London Bridge. Then the golden gate, he got it.
He proposed the idea to the council, a golden gate bridge, but with the collapsing of the London Bridge. After a week of planning the council replied, they said it was good and will probably start in 1982 and call it the Sander’s bridge. He thanked the council and knew that if his dad was still alive, he would’ve been proud.
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grace.creek- FEEDBACK
Week 5 Writing Homework:
Week 5 Writing
The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber, entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s dreams. His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight, instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed – was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Rick’s hands trembled as he slowly made his way down to the engineer’s sanctum. As soon as he touched the door handle to the safe sanctuary, a tremendous wave of guilt washed over him. His grim expression wavered as he felt tears starting to well up in his eyes. Rick brushed them away quickly. It was not time to cry. And he opened the door.
Alabaster white chalk dust pirouetted gracefully through shafts of warm afternoon light as Rick’s fingers tangoed across a borrowed slate, each calculation a step further from his father’s world. The engineer’s office, with its atmosphere of a supernatural hushed reverence, felt like a divine cathedral dedicated to precision and possibility. His father’s calloused hands would seem sacrilegious among these delicate instruments.
Every calculation stabbed like daggers, piercing his heart. ‘Bridge work flows in your blood, ‘ his father often declared, envisioning the brutish labour of the caissons. He had never thought of it any other way, but as Rick’s pencil glided across pages of precise calculations, he wondered if that same blood might carry different destinies – engineering dreams instead of calloused palms. Slowly, he began to realise the harsh reality of his calculations. He was somehow calculating the lifespan of a caisson worker itself. After an hour or so, he stopped. Maybe his father hadn’t noticed his disappearance.
The day calamity struck, Rick was delivering lunch pails to the decompression chamber when his father staggered, decompression sickness seizing his massive frame without warning. Rick stopped dead in his tracks. Rick’s mind raced through forbidden knowledge of pressure calculations and human limitations. He didn’t just calculate the lifespan of a caisson worker. He was calculating life itself…
Inside the airlock, his father’s laboured breathing echoed like a death knell, like a heart-aching elegy sang by the choirs of the departed. Fifteen minutes for safe decompression – Rick counted each second with mathematical precision while cradling his father’s head, understanding every calculation was counting down the time left for his father…
They emerged into harsh sunlight, his father’s trembling arm heavy across his shoulders. ‘You knew, ‘ his father whispered, eyes brimming with a mixture of sorrow and anger, finding the engineering text protruding arrogantly from Rick’s torn jacket. ‘You knew about pressure and time.’ The words hung between them like an unfinished story, awaiting an ending.
In the hospital’s sterile confines, Father’s weathered hand found Rick’s drawings. Silence stretched between them like an unfinished span. ‘You’ve got your mother’s mind, ‘ Father finally whispered, and for the first time, his calloused finger traced the precise lines of Rick’s dreams with something approaching comprehension. ‘Keep on going. I..”. His eyes fluttered. “Love you..”, he whispered for one last time, as tears of joy and sorrow cascaded down his cheeks. “Do it for not me, but you.” He closed his eyes for the last time. Rick stared at his father’s body with grief. “I’ll keep on going.” he whispered. “And I’ll do it for both of us.”
FEEDBACK
B H- FEEDBACK
The hiss of compressed air echoed through the caisson, sharp and insistent, as Rick watched his father disappear into the dark maw of the chamber. The iron door clanged shut with a hollow finality, and for a moment, the world outside seemed to hold its breath. Rick’s fingers tightened around the worn lunch pail in his hand. Inside was the crumpled note he hadn’t yet dared to read—the one asking for forgiveness for what he was about to do. Tonight, he would leave the tenement behind, and slip away to the engineer’s office where blueprints and numbers promised a way out. But standing there, watching the door seal with his father inside, Rick felt the weight of his decision press down on him like the river above. Was his dream worth betraying the man who had built everything they had? Was his future worth this silence between them?
A sudden tremor in the earth jolted him from his thoughts. The ground groaned, and his heart skipped. That sound wasn’t right.
“Rick!” Tommy’s voice cut through the air, panic rising in it. “The caisson—it’s losing pressure! We need help, fast!”
Rick’s pulse quickened. The old tenements, the endless days of labour—they seemed so far away, yet now he was standing on the edge of it, between his father’s world and his own. The physics of the problem began to form in his mind, each gear turning faster than his heart. He had trained for moments like this and studied pressure, failure points, and systems. But this wasn’t a textbook equation. This was real.
Without hesitation, he dropped the lunch pail and followed Tommy. His feet hit the wet, steel floors of the caisson, the pressure hitting him in a wave—the air thick, the atmosphere suffocating. Inside, the workers were scrambling, their breath shallow, faces pale. The gauges flickered, their needles dancing in the red zone. Rick’s eyes flicked over them, his mind already calculating. The pressure was dropping fast. Too fast.
He moved toward the malfunctioning valve, the gears clicking as he ran through every calculation. The familiar tension in his chest was no longer fear—it was focus, a sense of purpose. This was what he had trained for, the reason he had spent years in the books, dreaming of something bigger. But even as he adjusted the valve, the old voice in his head crept in. What am I doing here?
His father had spent his whole life in places like this—this caisson, these tunnels, the gruelling work of holding up a city. The labour, the sweat, the sacrifice—it had been his world. And Rick had always dreamed of leaving it behind. But now, as his hands turned the valve, adjusting the flow with precision, he realized the same skills that had taken him away from this life were what kept him tethered to it now.
The hiss of air softened, the gauges crept back toward safe levels, and a collective sigh of relief echoed through the caisson. Tommy clapped him on the back. “You did it, Rick. You saved us.”
Rick barely heard him. His mind was still wrapped in the machinery, in the calculations, in the ticking of the clock. The workers began to settle back into their posts, their breaths a little steadier. But Rick stood still, his hands slick with sweat, his heart still hammering in his chest.
The thought hit him like a blow. He had just saved their lives—but at what cost?
For a long moment, Rick stood in the caisson, surrounded by men who had spent their lives in this world. The hum of machinery, and the distant rumble of the river, wrapped around him like a memory he couldn’t shake. In that sound, he heard his father’s voice. The old man had always told him to stick to the job, to carry on the family tradition. But Rick had always wanted something more. Something beyond the sweat and dirt, beyond the machines. He had dreamed of a world where the work was not just with hands, but with mind.
But what did that dream mean, now that he was here, saving their lives with those same hands?
He had always thought of his father’s world as something to escape from, something to leave behind. But standing here, fixing what needed to be fixed, Rick began to see how they were not as separate as he had once thought. His father’s hands had built the foundation of this city, this bridge. But Rick’s mind—his knowledge—would keep it standing. The two worlds were not enemies. They were partners. The labour of his father had given him the chance to dream, and now, Rick was learning how to build on that foundation.
The tension eased from his shoulders. The danger had passed. The workers returned to their posts, murmuring in quiet relief, but Rick was no longer in a hurry to leave. He wasn’t just fixing a machine. He was standing in the middle of something that had taken decades to build—a bridge between his past and his future.
Tommy caught his eye and gave him a nod, but Rick didn’t move. Instead, he stepped back, breathing in the cool, damp air of the caisson. The weight of his decision still pressed on him, but now it was different. He hadn’t just saved them. He had saved himself, too. He hadn’t betrayed his father. He had built on his father’s legacy, using the very thing his father had given him—a solid foundation.
FEEDBACK
Gina- FEEDBACK
In the small, bustling town of Bridgewood, the air was thick with the scent of rust and steel, a family legacy built upon the backs of generations of bridge workers. Among them was a boy named Rick, who, despite the proud lineage of his family, yearned for something different. He dreamed of blueprints and equations, of structures that soared and designs that challenged the mundane. Yet, deep within him, the fear festered — fear of his father’s disappointment loomed larger than the very bridges they erected.
Rick’s father, a robust man with calloused hands and a determined spirit, had always instilled in him the value of their work. “Engineering’s for dreamers,” he would say, the conviction in his voice a barrier that Rick could not breach. So, he hid his textbooks and sketches, burying them beneath layers of lumber and tools in the shed. Late into the night, with only the moon as his witness, Rick studied fervently, determined to carve his own path without shattering his father’s expectations.
Everything changed one fateful day. As sunlight spilled across the worn wood of their worksite, a terrible crash echoed through the air — the bridge they had been repairing had collapsed. The cacophony of chaos erupted around him as Rick raced toward the sound, heart hammering. He pushed through the crowd of workers, dread coiling in his stomach, until he saw his father, trapped beneath the wreckage, the weight of metal pinning him cruelly to the ground.
Panic surged through Rick, fear gnawing at his insides. He knew, deep down, that he could solve this problem. His studies had taught him the principles of tension and leverage, the very mechanics needed to extract his father from the rubble. But the thought of revealing his hidden passion paralyzed him. Would his father understand his choices, or would he see them as an act of betrayal?
As he stood frozen, voices around him faded into a dull roar. Time stretched and twisted, and he saw only the pain on his father’s face, the man who had given him everything. With each passing moment, Rick realized his choice had been made for him. His father needed him now, and it was time to act unselfishly. Mustering all the courage he could find, he approached the scene and called out to the workers, directing them as he calculated the proper angles to lift the heavy debris.
“Use the leverage!” he shouted, the words flowing like a river as he guided them, his heart racing with the urgency of the moment. Together, they positioned wooden beams and madehift jacks. Under the pressure of Rick’s commands, the group worked in unison, every eye focused and every hand steady. Finally, with one last heave, they lifted the metal slab, freeing Rick’s father from its relentless grasp.
As the dust settled and silence enveloped them, Rick’s heart raced, uncertainty flooding through him. His father stared at him, bewildered, confusion and pain etched across his face. “How did you —?” he began, but the words died as he met Rick’s gaze. The truth hung in the air between them, heavy like the fallen bridge.
“I… I’ve been studying engineering,” Rick whispered, the confession tasting sweet with relief mixed with fear. “I wanted to help.”
His father’s features shifted, anger never crossing his brow. Instead, he smiled, a tired yet warm expression born from both relief and newfound pride. “You saved me, didn’t you?” There was no accusation, no blame, just gratitude billowing like a banner in the wind.
In that moment, a bridge was rebuilt between them, not of steel and concrete but of understanding and acceptance. Rick felt a weight lift off his shoulders; there was no need for secrecy anymore. The dream he had fought so hard to protect now glimmered brightly, bolstered by the very person he had feared would shatter it.
From that day forth, as they both healed — Rick from the fear that had cocooned him, and his father from the physical trials of the fall — they began anew; a father and son, united not just by blood but by the bridges they would build together, both from iron and the dreams they dared to chase.
FEEDBACK
Mei Li- FEEDBACK
The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber, entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s dreams.
His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight, instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed – was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Rick’s hands traced across the pressure gauge’s rapid climb, 5 kg per square inch, a number that once meant nothing but now symbolised a veiled danger. His knowledge was screaming at him to warn what such pressure could do to the human body.
Chalk dust rained down on the floor as the chalk danced across the chalkboard each symbol a step further from his father’s intended destiny for him. As he’d watch Rick solve insanely complex equations, Thomas the young draughtsman had said “Your mind was born for this work.” Yet each praise seemed like a dagger through the heart, his mind filled with the betrayal of generations of proud labours.
The day disaster struck, Rick was handing out lunch when his father tottered, decompression sickness hitting him without a warning. Each second was precious like gold as Rick’s brain raced through the forbidden knowledge of pressure and human endurance. Never had math and love clashed so viciously.
You could have warned us, ‘ the other workers muttered, seeing Rick’s calculations about pressure sickness. ‘You knew the dangers.’ Their accusations drove him to the half-built tower where he stood suspended between sky and river, feeling torn asunder. Below, the caissons claimed lives. Above, the bridge reached for something greater. Where did he truly belong?
FEEDBACK
Tony Jian- FEEDBACK
The door creaked as Father strode into the room, his face covered with ash.
“This will be your future as well, son” he said in a low, musty voice as he coughed up the stairs.
Little did he know, I was going to change the entire path of our family. I wanted to become a teacher, not a miner like my father. I wanted to make a change in my families academic area. Every night I would study, study and study. Every time I learnt something new. First simple additions and subtractions, all the way to the Pythagoras theorem and
Algebra. I was ready. That day, my father did not come home. News spread that the mine he worked in had collapsed. Immediately, I ran as fast as I could, faster than I had ever before. At the mine, I had found my father underneath a pile of rocks. I pulled and pulled until my strength started ebbing away. Then I started my mental calculations. I found the right rock of the right weight and started lifting it. After that a few more rocks shook loose. It was all working. I carried my father, exhausted from the reckless day at work, all the way back home. My adventure was over. At the doorstep, he fainted.
When he woke up the next morning, he asked me, “How did you do know how to free me from the rocks?”
I replied “I used math, father.” I may have not continued our family’s tradition of mining, but I have learnt an essential skill that can help our family. My father burst into tears.
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Jessica Xie- FEEDBACK
Writing Homework :
Using the story starter provided, craft a narrative about a pivotal day when Rick’s two worlds collide
during a caisson emergency. Show how his engineering knowledge and familial loyalty intertwine
in a moment of crisis. Focus on the physical and emotional pressure he experiences, using the bridge
itself as a metaphor for the connections he tries to build between his two worlds.
WRITING HOMEWORK:
( story starter is in capital letters )
THE COMPRESSED AIR HISSED THROUGH CORRODED PIPES LIKE A SERPENT’S WARNING AS RICK WATCHED HIS FATHER’S WEATHERED FORM DISAPPEAR INTO THE CAISSON’S MAW FOR ANOTHER BACKBREAKING SHIFT. THE MASSIVE WOODEN CHAMBER, ENTOMBED BENEATH THE RIVER’S MURKY SURFACE, PROMISED A SEMBLANCE OF DRYNESS FOR THE WORKERS EXCAVATING THE BRIDGE’S FOUNDATIONS, BUT ITS PRESSURISED ATMOSPHERE HARBOURED INVISIBLE PERILS THAT HAUNTED RICK’S DREAMS. HIS CALLOUSED FINGERS CLUTCHED HIS FATHER’S DENTED LUNCH PAIL – INSIDE LAY A CRUMPLED NOTE BEGGING FORGIVENESS FOR HIS IMPENDING BETRAYAL. TONIGHT, INSTEAD OF TRUDGING HOME TO THEIR TENEMENT, HE WOULD SLIP AWAY TO THE ENGINEER’S SANCTUM, WHERE LOGARITHMS AND STRESS CALCULATIONS BECKONED WITH PROMISES OF ELEVATION FROM THEIR WORKING-CLASS EXISTENCE. BUT AS THE CAISSON’S IRON DOOR CLANGED SHUT WITH SEPULCHRAL FINALITY, RICK’S CONSCIENCE WRITHED – WAS THE PURSUIT OF HIS DREAMS WORTH SHATTERING HIS FATHER’S?
Rick weaved his way through the room dodging the inventions that had malfunctioned. There were so many of them. Rick’s hands were trembling. What should he do, his mind racing with thoughts. Follow his dad or build his own dreams. Suddenly, there were loud coughs coming from his apartment next to the building. Whose coughs were that, they were really loud, is everything all right? His mind jumbled up in mixed up thoughts. Finally, he realised whose coughs they were. He bolted to his apartment and up the winding staircase. His dad, lying on his bed, looked pale as ever.
His dad had been sick for a while, but he could tell it was getting worse, and his time would soon be over. Rick’s worlds collided – his engineering knowledge screaming warnings about decompression while his heart screamed louder. In between his father’s rasping breaths, the notebook slipped from Rick’s pocket, and in that moment, both their worlds shifted on their foundations.
His father’s breaths started to slow down, and he started to close his eyes. His father seemed to be awake, for now. He couldn’t tell how much longer he had. He took out his phone and called 911. “Hello, how may we be in service?” asked the lady on the phone.
“Help! My father is really sick and is dying, I need help!” Rick said, at a fast pace. He was getting really worried.
After a few minutes the ambulance finally came. As Rick rode to the hospital with his dad, his dad started to open his eyes. “Dad, please don’t leave me,” Rick said, as tears came rushing down his eyes.
When they got to the hospital, tension was filling the air. In the hospital’s sterile confines, Father’s weathered hand found Rick’s drawings. Silence stretched between them like an unfinished span. “You’ve got your mother’s mind,” Father finally whispered, and for the first time, his calloused finger traced the precise lines of Rick’s dreams with something approaching comprehension.
FEEDBACK
Annabelle Tung- FEEDBACK
Compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s maw for another backbreaking shift. Entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, the large wooden chamber offered only a semblance of dryness to the men excavating the bridge’s foundations, its pressurized atmosphere holding invisible perils that haunted Rick’s dreams. Calloused fingers grasped his father’s battered lunch pail, where a crumpled note-incoherent begging for forgiveness from the betrayal to come-lay. Tonight, instead of trudging homeward to the tenement, he would sneak off to the engineer’s sanctum-where logarithms and calculations of stress waited-to promise exaltation from the working class. But as the iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience began to writhe: Was it worth pursuing his dreams if it meant shattering his father’s?
The morning fog clung to the river’s surface like a shroud as Rick paced the narrow bank, heart drumming in syncopation with the distant thud of picks, the relentless thrum of machinery beneath the murky water. Today was decisive; one miscalculation might tip the balance. Just a day earlier, he’d drafted his resignation-an ill-timed gift to a life he’d been yearning to escape.
He watched as the iron door of the caisson closed on another shift, an ache echoing in his chest. He had stolen an hour with the engineers before the day’s work, their criticisms hazy as he submerged himself in their world of numbers and steel. Dreams twisted inside him, the polar opposite to the smoke-impregnated air of his native tenement. This constant beat of hammers and drills beneath the river seemed to melt into his father’s fatigued face. But it wasn’t just dreams that Rick took with him; it was guilt, too.
The day dragged painfully through each tick of time, each one cranking his determination tighter to press on. Then, as he walked down the length of the bridge’s skeleton-like framework, an alarm pierced from the bowels of the caisson.
Emergency! Emergency!” the cutting screams of the foreman’s voice echoed over the familiar din.
Rick’s heart clenched. Fists clenched, he sprinted for the entrance-the weight of his lunch pail swung against his leg like a pendulum working out his resolve. He shoved through the crowd, jumbling together in a frenzied mass, his father’s features flashing across his mind. He couldn’t let that wooden door swallow him whole, not if there was a chance to save both his father and the future he envisioned.
Chaos reigned in the sleek underground chamber. The air shimmered with tension, the pipes rattling ominously as the miners struggled against the rapidly increasing water intrusion. Rick felt his training surge to the forefront. The calculations about water pressure flooded back to him from the deliberation with the engineers last night. “If we can divert the flow-
Out he yelled, his voice raised above the growing din. “We gotta shut it off upstream! Get a pressure estimate-shim in the wood!” The men were wavering, their confidence chased away by dark murmurs, but Rick urged them on, his voice now driven by an insistent throb of family allegiance. “With gravel for a barrier-it might hold back the flow!
His father, drenched and at last visible, met Rick’s eye in that flash of second while he fought to anchor the sinking foundation. It was one of those glances beyond time-understanding wreathed in exhaustion. In that instant, Rick felt the fracture between his dreams and loyalty threaten to blow completely. Success meant destruction-but failure meant losing the very world he feared to abandon.
The tide of work surged around them, and Rick called for determination. His mind was dancing amongst calculations, the theoretical stresses now concretized in desperate reality. Together, they could weave their fate-the bridge connecting them deeper than thoughts of ambition.
With labour’s combined strength, chiselling against the inexorable thrust of time, Rick battled for his father’s salvation no less than the crystallisation of that bond which sliced their lives into coherence. In that caisson, amidst the violent press of bodies and the storming river, some clarity was achieved; he wasn’t turning his back on one world for another, he was spanning them.
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dineshaggarwal13yahoo-com- FEEDBACK
Bridge Between Worlds: Rick’s Crucible Identity
The compressed air hissed through rusted pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form vanish into the caisson’s entrance for another gruelling shift. The massive wooden chamber, submerged beneath the river’s murky surface, offered a semblance of dryness for the workers digging the bridge’s foundations, yet its pressurised atmosphere concealed invisible dangers that plagued Rick’s dreams. His calloused, chipped fingers clung to his father’s dented lunch pail – inside was a crumpled note pleading for forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight, instead of trudging back to their tenement, he would sneak away to the engineer’s haven, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with the promise of escape from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with a sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience twisted – was pursuing his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Pewter fog shrouded the nascent bridge towers like burial shrouds, while below, men shuffled toward the caisson’s entrance like penitents approaching confession. Rick’s father stood among them, his broad shoulders bowed under two decades of relentless labour. ‘This bridge will outlast us all,’ he’d declare, though lately those words felt more like a curse than prophecy.
Each dawn brought its cacophony of portents – chains clanking like prisoners’ shackles, steam whistles shrieking like nails on a chalkboard, and beneath it all, the caisson’s ceaseless hiss of compressed air that held back the river’s crushing weight. Today, the familiar symphony carried new discordant notes, perhaps reflecting the turbulence in Rick’s own conscience.
Chalk dust swirled through shafts of afternoon light as Rick’s fingers danced across borrowed slate, each calculation a step further from his father’s world. The engineer’s office, with its air of hushed reverence, felt like a cathedral dedicated to precision and possibility. His father’s calloused hands would seem sacrilegious among these delicate instruments. Echoes of his father’s words ricocheted in his mind, ‘bridge work flows in your blood,’ his father would often say, envisioning the brutish labour of the caissons. But as Rick’s pencil glided across pages of precise calculations, he wondered if that same blood might carry different destinies – engineering dreams instead of calloused palms.
The day disaster struck, Rick was delivering lunch pails to the decompression chamber when his father staggered, decompression sickness seizing his massive frame without warning. Rick froze. His mind raced through forbidden knowledge of pressure calculations and human limitations. He wasn’t just calculating the lifespan of a caisson worker; he was calculating life itself.
They emerged into harsh sunlight, his father’s trembling arm heavy across his shoulders. ‘You knew,’ his father whispered, eyes brimming with a mix of sorrow and anger, spotting the engineering text protruding from Rick’s torn jacket. ‘You knew about pressure and time.’ The words hung between them like an unfinished story, awaiting an ending.
Inside the airlock, his father’s laboured breathing echoed like a death knell, an aching elegy sung by the choirs of the departed. Fifteen minutes for safe decompression – Rick counted each second with mathematical precision while cradling his father’s head, knowing every calculation was counting down the time left for his father.
FEEDBACK
Phuong Nguyen- FEEDBACK
Rick stood on the edge of the riverbank, staring at the turbulent water battering the caisson of the bridge he was building. It was supposed to be a milestone day for the project, but the unrelenting rains had transformed the calm river into a furious torrent, threatening the stability of the foundation. His phone buzzed repeatedly in his pocket, but he ignored it. Here, at the construction site, he was an engineer—a problem-solver, a leader, a master of equations. But somewhere across town, he was also Ella’s dad.
Ella had called earlier, her small voice tinged with excitement and expectation. “Dad, it’s Science Fair day! You promised you’d be there.” He had promised. But the emergency call had come before dawn: the caisson pumps were failing, the workers were panicked, and the entire operation hung by a thread.
Rick paced the temporary scaffolding, barking orders to the crew. They were trying to redirect the water flow to ease the pressure, but the temporary barriers weren’t holding. A worker was trapped below, the rising water threatening to engulf him. Rick’s mind raced through a dozen scenarios. None were perfect. None were safe.
“Sir, the only way to stabilize the caisson is to redirect the flow manually,” said the foreman.
“Which means someone has to go in,” Rick finished grimly. He couldn’t ask anyone to take a risk he wouldn’t take himself.
As he donned the safety harness, his phone buzzed again. He hesitated, pulling it out of his pocket. It was Ella. His heart twisted. He could hear her voice in his mind: You promised, Dad.
Descending into the caisson felt like stepping into another world—damp, cold, and suffocating. The roar of the water was deafening. Rick worked quickly, securing the hoses and reinforcing the temporary barriers, every second measured against the rising flood.
In his mind, he envisioned Ella, standing at the school gymnasium, her poster board ready, her eyes scanning the crowd for a familiar face. The image hit him harder than the icy water against his skin. Was he building bridges or tearing them down? His entire career was about connection—spanning divides, linking places. But his own life felt like a widening chasm.
Hours later, when Rick emerged from the caisson, the worker was safe, the water flow redirected, and the crisis under control. The crew clapped him on the back, but Rick barely registered it. Exhausted and soaked, he reached for his phone and dialed Ella’s number.
“Dad?” she answered, her voice small.
“I’m so sorry,” he began, but she interrupted him.
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m proud of you.”
Her words hit him with the force of the river. Later that night, they sat together at the kitchen table, her science project spread between them. Ella explained her ideas while Rick listened, his hands still trembling from the day’s ordeal.
The bridge stood as a testament to his engineering skill, but the true connection was here, across the table, spanning the divide between father and daughter.
FEEDBACK
Eric Xu- FEEDBACK
Week 5 Writing Scholarship Homework
Bridge Between Worlds:
Rick’s Crucible of Identity
The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning
as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s
maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber,
entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of
dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its
pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s
dreams. His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside
lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight,
instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the
engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with
promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s
iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed –
was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Future outcomes ran through Rick’s mind. He shut his eyes swiftly and held his head in agony. His teeth grinded against each other. Anxiousness swarmed inside of Rick like devious bees. His face strained. Rick tripped over his experiment goggles. He had a presentation today to reveal but was puzzled by either divulging his dad’s orders or his passion, which was to show the reaction of peculiar acid and base. Tears, devoured by frustration cascaded down Rick’s cheeks.
When it was time for Rick’s presentation, he wore a burnished, sleek tuxedo and gleaming, polished shoes. As Rick exited his vehicle and into the scorching sun, he was bombarded by an aura of prestige, as cameras flashed vigorously. Rick’s heart enthused. Jolts of perturbation went down his spine. Sweat trickled down his forehead. Rick meandered onto the vast stage, staring in awe at the area, visitors cheered. Rick spotted his dad, who had a grin stretched across his face.
‘Today, ladies and gentlemen, I will be revealing my studies to all of you. This is the reaction of acid and base,’ declared Rick. Rick’s dad glared at Rick furiously. Rick’s dad’s pulse pulsed briskly. He brought a base out and placed it on the table. Then, Rick poured acid onto the base. All eyes were glued onto the experiment. Suddenly, salt materialised out of the combination. The rabble went berserk. Queries crammed in the area. ‘This happens because the cations from the base and the anions form the acid are the mixture of slat,’ explains Rick. People chatted about Rick for what felt like eons.
When Rick’s dad approached Rick, he was excepting to get jeered at. His eyes became dreary. ‘Rick, you have proved me wrong, follow other passions you have, because when someone forces you to do something you do not want to, the result is filthy, but when something is completed by passion, the result is always sublime,’ Rick’s dad stated. Rick felt like a quokka as he gave his dad an embracing cuddle.
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The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a malicious snake as Rick watched his father get swallowed up by the cassion’s jaws for another strenuous shift. The massive wooden chamber, entombed beneath the river’s intelligible surface, promised of dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its pressurised atmosphere yielded invisible perils that haunted Rick’s nightmares. His calloused fingers, worn from the countless years of excavating of ores, held a dented, rusty lunch pail, a solemn letter begging for forgiveness. Tonight, he would not be heading back home to the family of workers. Today, he would escape and pursue the dreams he had cherished for so long, but deep inside, he felt a stabbing guilt of what he was going to do. “Bridge work is in our blood”, his father had often declared, but Rick always wondered if he could change it. The shame seared his skull with a stabbing pain as he clutched his head, conflicted.
Rick’s hands trembled as he slowly made his way down to the engineer’s sanctum. As soon as he touched the door handle to the safe sanctuary, a tremendous wave of guilt washed over him. His grim expression wavered as he felt tears starting to well up in his eyes. Rick brushed them away quickly. It was not time to cry. He opened the door. He grabbed his trusty alabaster white chalk, scrawling complex equations across the borrowed slate, each letter bringing him farther away from his fathers world. Hec oils feel the impending betrayal stabbing holes in his heart, his soul slowly falling apart with the pressure.
On that fateful day, Rick was on his way to deliver the lunch pails when calamity struck. His father staggered, decompression sickness seizing his large frame as he flopped onto the floor with a juddering crash. Rick froze, calculations whizzing through his head as the forbidden knowledge demanded release. Inside the airlock, his father’s laboured breathing echoed like a death knell, like a heart-aching elegy sang by the choirs of the departed. Fifteen minutes for safe decompression. Rick counted each second with mathematical precision while cradling his father’s head, understanding every calculation was counting down the time left for his father.
They emerged into the shining sun, his father’s arm draped heavily across his shoulders. “You knew,” he whispered, his frame shaking with sorrow and regret. “You knew about pressure and time.” he accused, yet his accusation was not the one Rick had envisioned. Slowly, he watched his father breathe his final breath, eyes brimming with hot tears, sliding down his cheeks.
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**Title: The Caisson’s Fall**
Rick stood at the edge of the construction site, his eyes locked on the caisson below. The massive steel-and-concrete structure that was supposed to anchor the bridge was tilting, a creaking groan reverberating through the air. His stomach churned. A breach in the foundation meant disaster. Lives were at stake, and the entire project was hanging in the balance.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. *Dad*.
**Dad:** *The shop’s flooded. Your brother’s handling it, but I could really use your help.*
Rick’s pulse quickened. The floodwaters had come without warning, and his father’s small fabrication shop—everything they had worked for—was now under threat. His younger brother, always the one to stay behind, was in charge of the shop, while Rick had left years ago to pursue a career in civil engineering. He’d built bridges for a living, but his heart had never truly crossed the bridge back to his family.
As he stared at the chaos unfolding below, another shiver of dread ran through him. The caisson was sinking. He needed to act fast. Years of training and experience surged to the forefront of his mind. The pressure of the moment was suffocating, but Rick focused. There was no room for hesitation. He mentally calculated the forces at play, assessed the damage to the caisson, and understood exactly how to stabilize it. The math was clear, but in the midst of this physical and emotional storm, he felt the weight of a different kind of equation: the one that weighed his duty to his family against his responsibility here on this job.
His phone buzzed again. The shop. His father.
*Can’t you be here, Rick? We need you.*
The words stung, as if his father’s disappointment seeped through the screen. But the bridge—this bridge—was his project, his responsibility. He had worked too hard to let it fail.
A shout cut through his thoughts. One of the workers, an older man who’d been with the crew for years, had slipped into the river. Without thinking, Rick sprang into action. He waded through the muddy water, the coolness of it briefly shocking his senses. His heart pounded as he reached the man, dragging him out of the river. As Rick hauled him to safety, he couldn’t help but feel the weight of both crises pressing on him.
His father’s text echoed in his mind, but he silenced it. The worker needed him. He couldn’t leave now.
The worker gasped for air, coughing violently. Rick offered him a reassuring pat on the back, then turned his attention back to the caisson. It groaned again, a low, menacing sound. Every instinct told him the foundation was giving way. He had no time to waste.
Rick shouted orders, rallying the crew. “Get the supports in place! We need to stabilize the structure—now!” His voice rang with authority, though inside, the conflict raged. He glanced at his phone. Another message. *I’ll handle it, Rick. Don’t worry about the shop.*
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The cacophony of the Cassion ringed Rick’s ears. Bridges had been through all of his generations. His mother’s ancestors had all been bridge engineers, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to be an assistant doctor in the urban city helping his local citizens.
Sadly, his father died before he was born, and according to his mum, his father would have encouraged him to do whatever job he wanted to do. But his mum wanted him to continue the tradition of bridge engineering. Before his mum started bridge engineering, she worked as a doctor. Every second day, she would invite him to be her assistant, and he loved working around her room and helping her. Since then, his passion had been helping people and being a doctor.
In 2 weeks, Rick would have the choice to switch jobs. Up to this moment, his mum had been reminding him to stick with bridge engineering, but inside Rick knew he had freedom of what job to choose and he would choose to switch to a doctor. Later on, Rick made a decision that he would decide on the day so he wouldn’t stress in the upcoming time.
“Hello Rick, your time has come to decide on your new job, would you like to change?”
Rick’s mind was at sea, he was completely clueless as to what to say next. Should he follow his mother’s path for him, or should he follow his own path of freedom? His mother had been kind and hospitable to him his whole life after his father died. Now would be the time to make it up to her for all of the work that she has done.
“Alright, I am going to continue to be a bridge engineer,”
“Thanks”
As Rick entered his house, his mother explained that there is always a second chance and that Rick could do what she did, switch jobs. At least he could try different jobs. Who knows, he might end up enjoying this job more than being a doctor. If it wasn’t a good job, then why has it been passed on for generations?
Kobe:)
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The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning
as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s
maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber,
entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of
dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations. Still, its
pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s
dreams. His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside
lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight,
instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the
engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with
promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s
iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed –
was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
His brain was frenzied, jittering on the precipice of his family lineage. Guilt, anger, and confusion swarmed through his mind like wasps invading a hive. His teeth ground painfully as his fingers slowly grew numb with indecision. He didn’t know whether he was born a bridge-maker or a scholar. Suddenly, his thoughts were intercepted by a piercing cough. His dad stumbled out of the cassion, his eyes dreary and his fingers calloused with experience. His voice rasped on like an interminable blare of static. With each cough, his condition was deteriorating. On their way home, where the clouds were bleak and the crows were endlessly crying, Rick felt an overshadowing fear that something was wrong.
As the grey sun rose over the horizon, casting a feeble glow across the blanket of monotony that shrowded Rick’s town, he heard an urgent knock on the door. He scrambled down but his father was already there. “Sir,” an Executive of the Cassion Maw intoned, “There’s been a malfunction in the compression chambers in the cassion and we need two people to readjust and stabilise the water pressure. ”
Rick got a beckoning glance from the gaunt executive, a glance stained with both disapproval and urgency. But regardless of which, he had to go. He couldn’t risk his father going by himself, let alone the old frail man that stood before him now.
As they descended into the eerie darkness, his father cast a torch but as the trapdoor above them shut, Rick quickly extinguished it. “What was that for!” His father said, but Rick said nothing. As his fingers clamped around the pressurize, he felt his body getting squeezed in like somebody wedged him in between a closing door. He could barely make out the barometric pressure, dropping from 1032 hectopascals down to 1005. Suddenly, his father slumped to the ground. Clear signs of decompression sickness was written all over his body. He didn’t meant to do this. But he did.
He returned the pressure to 1032 hectopascals, and the water pressure was back to normal. He clutched his father in his arms as he turned up the pressure inside the chamber, but he had no access to pure oxygen. That’s when he saw it. The oxygen pressure chamber. With the last of his energy, he scrambled to the top of the caisson, thrusting his father’s head momentarily into the Pressured Air Supply. His eyelids flapped wildly as blood returned to his pale skin. Suddenly, his eyes darted to Rick. “You knew. You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew everything.” As he let out one last rasping cough, Rick realised that he had forgotten to turn down the pressure. “No!” He screamed, hot tears streaking down his face, “No! Dad don’t leave me!” But it was too late. “I don’t hate you for knowing though, remember that.” His father whispered a sly smile tracing over his face as he, for the last time, closed his eyes in peace. As the pressure returned to normal, Rick sat in the darkness, weeping silently on the precipice of the cliff of guilt and regret.
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Benjamin Yang- FEEDBACK
The compacted air slithered through the corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning, as Rick spied his father’s shadow slip into the shadows and disappeared into the caission’s maw for another bone crushing shift. The gigantic oak chamber entombed beneath the river’s swampy brown surface, promised a hint of dryness where the workers were excavating under the bridge’s foundation, but it’s burdened atmosphere glinted of invisible perils at the edge of the worker’s fingertips, at the precipice of collapsing, His calloused fingers grasped his father’s lunch pail – inside, a crumpled note assigned to Rick specifically, begging for forgiveness for imminent betrayal. But, he didn’t, what his blueprint was came out of the blue, tweaking with the calculations and logarithms lay untouched, promises of elevation from their working class existence. As the caisson’s iron door creaked open, Rick dashed for the exit, just out of view, determined to free his father and other workers from two decades of slavery and hard labour.
The morning sunlight shimmered down onto the bridge, casting a haven for those above, contrasting with the under, where men laboriously worked. This cannot be happening, Rick thought. His mind was spinning like the world, swiping images of claiming lives underneath or living in a haven where we survived on hundreds of laboured people. As Rick ran through the corridors, he came upon the door, a sign inscribed in, strictly saying anyone who enters will be severely punished, a way that they won’t think of. Rick dismissed the sign and creaked open the door, scanning for any movements. Dust shrouded Rick as he walked around the cramped squalor small room, cobwebs adorning the corners. The pipes creaked and hissed loudly, at the brim of bursting. In the middle was the control panel, the key to solving the problem. “Wait,” groaned a voice behind him, “Before you do it, please, forgive me for everything that I did wrong, I..I.. Love you Rick.” Rick heard a thud behind him, facing his father, crumpled onto the floor, his hand reaching out. “Please, forgive m…me.” And Rick’s father closed his eyes for the last time. Tears flowed down Rick’s cheeks as he pulled the level. “I forgive you,” Rick muttered, the bridge falling down on him.
This is a slightly edited version, plz mark this, even though it might not add any marks
The compacted air slithered through the corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning, as Rick spied his father’s shadow slip into the shadows and disappeared into the caission’s maw for another bone crushing shift. The gigantic oak chamber entombed beneath the river’s swampy brown surface, promised a hint of dryness where the workers were excavating under the bridge’s foundation, but it’s burdened atmosphere glinted of invisible perils at the edge of the worker’s fingertips, at the precipice of collapsing, His calloused fingers grasped his father’s lunch pail – inside, a crumpled note assigned to Rick specifically, begging for forgiveness for imminent betrayal. But, he didn’t, what his blueprint was came out of the blue, tweaking with the calculations and logarithms lay untouched, promises of elevation from their working class existence. As the caisson’s iron door creaked open, Rick dashed for the exit, just out of view, determined to free his father and other workers from two decades of slavery and hard labour.
The morning sunlight shimmered down onto the bridge, casting a haven for those above, contrasting with against the under, where men laboriously worked. This cannot be happening, Rick thought. His mind was spinning like the world vigorously, swiping images of claiming lives underneath or living in a haven where we survived on hundreds of laboured people. As Rick ran through the corridors, he came upon the door, a sign inscribed in, strictly saying anyone who enters will be severely punished, a way that they won’t think of. Rick dismissed the sign and creaked open the door, scanning for any movements. Dust shrouded Rick as he walked around the cramped squalor small room, cobwebs adorning the corners. The pipes creaked and hissed loudly, at the brim of bursting. In the middle was the control panel, the key to solving the problem. “Wait,” groaned a voice behind him, “Before you do it, please, forgive me for everything that I did wrong, I..I.. Love you Rick.” Rick heard a thud behind him, facing his father, crumpled onto the floor, his left hand reaching out. “Please, forgive m…me.” And Rick’s father closed his eyes for the last time. Tears flowed down Rick’s cheeks as he pulled the level. “I forgive you,” Rick muttered, the bridge falling down on him, the ultimate consequence of the people above and below, claiming the lives of hundreds
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The constricted air squealed through tarnished pipes like a squirrels warning as Rick watched his father in his rusty form in the shadows and disappeared into the caission’s maw for another bone chilling chronicle shift. The huge wethered chamber, entombed beneath the river’s muky surface, promised a dry workspace for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its impelled atmosphere welcomed the invisible perils that daunted Rick’s dreams turning them to nightmares. His insensetive fingers clutched his father’s incurvate lunch pail – inside lay a crumpled note begging for absolution for his impending betrayal. Tonight, stress calculations beckoned with promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed – was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s? Rick’s hands trembled as he slowly made his way to the engineer’s sanctum. As soon as he touched the door handle to the safe sanctuary, a tremendous of guilt knocked him over. His grim expression deviated as he felt tears starting to sting his eyes. Rick rubbed them away quickly. It was not time to cry over the past, we have to move on. And he opened the door. Alabaster white chalk dust whirled through optimistic warm afternoon lights as Rick’s fingers tangoed across a borrowed slate, every calculation meant a step further from his father’s head. The engineer’s office felt like a divine cathedral dedicated to possibility. His father’s calloused hands would seem sinful among these fragile instruments. Every calculation stabbed like bullets piercing his heart. He had never thought of it any other way, as his pencil glided across pages of precise calculations, he wondered if that same blood might carry different destinies – engineering dreams instead of calloused palms. Slowly, he began to realise the harsh reality of his calculations. After an hour or so, he stopped. Maybe his father hadn’t noticed his disappearance. The day calamity struck, Rick was delivering lunch pails to the decompression chamber when his father staggered, decompression sickness seizing his massive frame without warning. Rick stopped dead in his tracks. Rick’s mind raced through forbidden knowledge of pressure calculations and human limitations. He didn’t just calculate the lifespan of a caisson worker. He was calculating life itself… Inside the airlock, his father’s laboured breathing echoed like a heart-aching elegy sang by the dismented choirs of the departed. Fifteen minutes for safe decompression – Rick counted each second with mathematical precision while cradling his father’s head, understanding every calculation was counting down the time left for his father…They emerged into harsh sunlight, his father’s trembling arm heavy across his shoulders. ‘You knew, ‘ his father whispered, eyes brimming with a mixture of sorrow and anger, finding the engineering text protruding arrogantly from Rick’s torn jacket. ‘You knew about pressure and time.’ The words hung between them like an unfinished story, awaiting an ending. In the hospital’s sterile confines, Father’s weathered hand found Rick’s drawings. Silence stretched between them like an unfinished span. ‘You’ve got your mother’s mind, ‘ Father finally whispered, and for the first time, his calloused finger traced the precise lines of Rick’s dreams with something approaching comprehension. ‘Keep on going. I..”. His eyes fluttered. “Love you..”, he whispered for one last time, as tears of joy and sorrow ran down his cheeks. “Do it for not me, but you.” He closed his eyes for the last time. Rick stared at his father’s body with grief. “I’ll keep on going.” he whispered. “And I’ll do it for both of us.”
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The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber, entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s dreams. His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight, instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed – was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Rick lived in two worlds. The engineering side but also the building. His father believed that it was a burden to carry on the building industry. It was hard, living with one parent. Rick”s mother had been exploded in a mining company and his dad just had one more thing that caused him grief every day. As he continued down the steep, unyielding corridor, he ashamed and realise leaving his father would just make life harder. The steel door creaked open and there he saw his father, looking desperately for Rick. Rick burst out the door but the second he did, his father was seized away, drugged, and dragged down the rocky path.
A flow of anger escaped his body and he stabbed the kidnapper, straight in the heart. Scarlet blood oozed out and blanketed the man. Rick’s anger was steering his body around and he reached for his father’s hand, but gripped the plain air, nowhere for his father to be found. Rick tore the place down, looking for his father. As he recklessly did, he punched a self destruct button.
“No Rick No!!” shouted his father as he pushed Rick out of the room. Rick stood in horror as his father came down with the building. Tears dripped down Rick’s face but no sound came out. He was mentally damaged and too intense to repair.
Rick stuttered into the grim hospital, with helpless people lying across hard patched beds. At the very end of the aisle, he saw his father, lying hopelessly on the edge of the bed.
“Rick, I’m sorry. Please enjoy the rest of your life. I will always be with you in your soul. Me and your mother will be proud of you. Goodbye.” Rick’s father’s eyes closed and his heart stopped beating. Tears fell from Rick’s eyes as he saw what had happened. His father was gone.
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Done 🙂 thank you for marking
Bridge Between Worlds: Rick’s Crucible of Identity
The compressed air hissed through corroded pipes like a serpent’s warning as Rick watched his father’s weathered form disappear into the caisson’s maw for another backbreaking shift. The massive wooden chamber, entombed beneath the river’s murky surface, promised a semblance of dryness for the workers excavating the bridge’s foundations, but its pressurised atmosphere harboured invisible perils that haunted Rick’s dreams. His calloused fingers clutched his father’s dented lunch pail – inside lay a crumpled note begging forgiveness for his impending betrayal. Tonight, instead of trudging home to their tenement, he would slip away to the engineer’s sanctum, where logarithms and stress calculations beckoned with promises of elevation from their working-class existence. But as the caisson’s iron door clanged shut with sepulchral finality, Rick’s conscience writhed – was the pursuit of his dreams worth shattering his father’s?
Dilapidated men shuffled unknowingly towards their grotesque fates like sinners approaching confession, as if ready to embrace their untimely demise. Their sunken skeletons were smeared with soot, their souls burdened by the weight of pressure and backbreaking labour. Among the battered victims enshrouded in fatigue, Rick’s father’s broad, squalid frame would inevitably succumb to the clutches of debility. The crippled image tore at Rick’s heart. The sun descended from beyond the horizon, tainting the firmament in kaleidoscopic hues with its impeccable radiance. Guilt ensnared his body, surging through his heart in untrammelled jolts of galvanic contrition. His heart split into warring halves, screaming between duty and ambition. Each footstep thumped in rhyme with his heartbeat as he trampled across the murky depths of 1869 Brooklyn, the filthy, anachronistic ambience a miscellany of stagecoach wheels scraping against the rugged stone and the stench of the broken sewage systems seeping into his melange of swarming thoughts. As Rick glanced back, he could see the muddy banks of the Brooklyn River, the grimy umber depths swirling and gleaming in the fading sunlight. He could still envision his father’s weak voice coming out in raspy breaths as his health continued deteriorating, reverberating through his brain, “Bridge work is your lifeblood. Its the fate your ancestors had written for you.”
The engineer’s office was a sanctum of clandestine passion, a mathematical empyrean where his father’s calloused hands would seem sacrilegious among these delicate instruments. The hushed reverence drifted serenity through his veins as his fingers pranced across each onyx slate, each pristine calculation a step further from the world of his father, each digit a diminutive rope-bridge stretching between the vast chasm of two worlds. The cacophony of mechanic buzzing echoed faintly within his brain, lost in a world of number and mental toil. Rick unravelled complex equations with supernatural intuition, the abalone chalk dashing across the obsidian within seconds, his mind entangled with the knowledge of what pressure could do to a human body. Trepidation grasped his heart as the truth sunk beneath his skin in cold invisible daggers.
Insalubrious waves of dust surged across the plain, teak-brown landscape. Twisted, asphalt figures pranced across the shadows, extending yearningly towards the victims of devitalization and fatigue. Rick’s body ached from his father’s insisted practical experience, his body screaming in exhaustion. Rick was delivering monochromatic lunch pails when decompression sickness seizing his father’s massive frame as he staggered forwards. His figure paled deathly, his face scrunched with agony as his co-workers supported him through the personal access tube.
“You knew about pressure and time.” Rick’s father coughed up the words arduously.
The antiseptic air drifted into Rick’s mind, lost among floods of melancholy and grief. The impeccable white of the hospital bed blurred into the background. Tears of anguish cascaded down his cheeks as he clasped his father’s crippled hands, camouflaged in pulsating blue veins. His father’s eyes were fixed onto Rick’s notepad, darting rapidly across the pages of calculation and realisation. The deafening silence stretched between them like an unfinished span. For a brief moment, comprehension dawned on his features for the first and last time. “You have your mother’s mind.” he whispered, his ragged breathing laborious and harsh as he choked out his final words. A minute smile crawled across his mouth as he took his final breath.
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Hope you like it 🙂
Pranav – Week 5 Writing Homework
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Priya Ramakrishnan- FEEDBACK
“Hey Rick, come over here” said dad as he took off his disgusting worn out boots. “I’m coming, just finishing my schoolwork” I lied as I finished fixing the floor to my diminutive, grimy room. I walked over to my dad and saw him holding a new pickaxe. “what’s that for” it’s for my upgrade to a bridge material finder. “That’s great” I say. Soon after he showed me his new pickaxe, I took off my coat and I went to bed. The next morning, I woke up to the gruesome sound of people firing guns and screaming in the streets tarnished streets of 1902 downtown Manhattan. As I went to get my tin food box and get ready for school, I couldn’t help but notice how depressed my dad looked. It looked like he had never wanted to get upgraded to a bridge materialist miner. I pondered on It as I walked the overcrowded streets to school. My school was a public school where there were no windows, only 4 textbooks and the teachers only came 3 times a week. I didn’t find it fair at the time but now I realise what a hard time the teachers had. Tuesday at school was history day, and the history teacher was the most revolting and mean hag in the country. She would pull students by their ears and smack them with the cane if they got even 1 question wrong. Depressingly, this life continued for 6 years until I turned 17 and got into an extremely good school for engineering. I told them that I would come to their school and I hoped my dad would agree.
He didn’t. He started shouting his lungs out at me saying things like “Our family have been bridge makers for generations!!!” and “I have worked all my life as a bridge maker for you” I left him after 3 weeks of nonstop chaos realising that my peace of mind and my engineering passion was much more important that some bridge building. When I set off, my dad was happy and I couldn’t understand how he could be so apathetic towards my love for engineering. Upon arrival at the school, I realised that I had undoubtedly done the right thing. The school had everything, It had a cafeteria, a lake, a sports field, over 1000 dormitories and it had a great, welcoming community, It was perfect. I sat on my cushioned bed in a room where there was no mould growing on the walls and in the cabinets and get this… It had its own bathroom, but I couldn’t get my dad off my mind. He was like a thundering cloud following me around ready to strike my bubble of guilt and pop it. After a short 2 years of never ending homework and 9 hours of lessons a day, at 19 years old I finally graduated, it was the most ecstatic feeling ever. Graduation felt like my life was fulfilled and I felt reborn. Though, there was a part of my that was missing, it was my dad. I hadn’t seen him for 2 whole years and my bubble of guilt was finally popped.
I took the next train home to Manhattan and I went to see my dad, I found him at his apartment and I was Dumbfounded at how frail he had gotten. He was sitting on his chair looking at the wall with his bruised and blistered hands clutching a photo of me. He looked at me like he was dreaming and I didn’t know how to react. I bolted at him and hugged the life out of him for what felt like an eternity until he wheezed is it really you rick? Yes, it’s me I said. I told him of my ultimate success and how I was already the CEO of a prominent global engineering firm and I had made $700,000 pounds (107,827,620 AUD in todays money) He was flabbergasted. I bought him a good house at the riverside and we lived together and had tons of fun on our new boat until his passing.
THE END
“Hey Rick, come over here” said dad as he took off his disgusting worn out boots. “I’m coming, just finishing my schoolwork” I lied as I finished fixing the floor to my diminutive, grimy room. I walked over to my dad and saw him holding a new pickaxe. “what’s that for” it’s for my upgrade to a bridge material finder. “That’s great” I say. Soon after he showed me his new pickaxe, I took off my coat and I went to bed. The next morning, I woke up to the gruesome sound of people firing guns and screaming in the streets tarnished streets of 1902 downtown Manhattan. As I went to get my tin food box and get ready for school, I couldn’t help but notice how depressed my dad looked. It looked like he had never wanted to get upgraded to a bridge materialist miner. I pondered on It as I walked the overcrowded streets to school. My school was a public school where there were no windows, only 4 textbooks and the teachers only came 3 times a week. I didn’t find it fair at the time but now I realise what a hard time the teachers had. Tuesday at school was history day, and the history teacher was the most revolting and mean hag in the country. She would pull students by their ears and smack them with the cane if they got even 1 question wrong. Depressingly, this life continued for 6 years until I turned 17 and got into an extremely good school for engineering. I told them that I would come to their school and I hoped my dad would agree.
He didn’t. He started shouting his lungs out at me saying things like “Our family have been bridge makers for generations!!!” and “I have worked all my life as a bridge maker for you” I left him after 3 weeks of nonstop chaos realising that my peace of mind and my engineering passion was much more important that some bridge building. When I set off, my dad was happy and I couldn’t understand how he could be so apathetic towards my love for engineering. Upon arrival at the school, I realised that I had undoubtedly done the right thing. The school had everything, It had a cafeteria, a lake, a sports field, over 1000 dormitories and it had a great, welcoming community, It was perfect. I sat on my cushioned bed in a room where there was no mould growing on the walls and in the cabinets and get this… It had its own bathroom, but I couldn’t get my dad off my mind. He was like a thundering cloud following me around ready to strike my bubble of guilt and pop it. After a short 2 years of never ending homework and 9 hours of lessons a day, at 19 years old I finally graduated, it was the most ecstatic feeling ever. Graduation felt like my life was fulfilled and I felt reborn. Though, there was a part of my that was missing, it was my dad. I hadn’t seen him for 2 whole years and my bubble of guilt was finally popped.
I took the next train home to Manhattan and I went to see my dad, I found him at his apartment and I was Dumbfounded at how frail he had gotten. He was sitting on his chair looking at the wall with his bruised and blistered hands clutching a photo of me. He looked at me like he was dreaming and I didn’t know how to react. I bolted at him and hugged the life out of him for what felt like an eternity until he wheezed is it really you rick? Yes, it’s me I said. I told him of my ultimate success and how I was already the CEO of a prominent global engineering firm and I had made $700,000 pounds (107,827,620 AUD in todays money) He was flabbergasted. I bought him a good house at the riverside and we lived together and had tons of fun on our new boat until his passing.
THE END
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