Waiting

He watched as the second hand overlapped the minute hand. He sighed, and went back to reading his magazine. Or at least he tried to. But something on his mind was preventing him from concentrating. He was sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the results of his CT scan. For weeks, he'd been experiencing chest pains and had been coughing up blood, and upon consulting a doctor, he'd been told that it might be lung cancer. It wouldn't be a shock if the results proved that. After all, he had been a smoker for decades. He'd thought of quitting, but he didn't think he had the willpower to do it. Without family or friends to support him, there wasn't a reason to stop. Friends… family… He shuddered. He didn't want to think of his past. Turning a page, he forced himself to continue reading the magazine, waiting.

Holy, that was a hard paragraph to write. Did it seem hard to you? Probably not. But that's because you didn't notice that there's something very peculiar about it. And no, it isn't that there are no 'e's. But it is certainly missing something. As a matter of fact, it's missing two things that are usually ubiquitous in writing. Can you spot what they are? If you think you know the answer, comment (or even better, post something!) with your own paragraph/sample that's missing the same things. (Hopefully I didn't screw up and actually add in some of the things I was trying to avoid. Also note that I was kind of cheap in avoiding the usage of these, so don't say it's not technically completely free of them.)