Just a little more advice please

I have been putting together a novel. It is a murder mystery. I have been toying around with point of view. Below I have posted my Prologe. Please tell me which sound better or which flows better. Thanks:

PROGLOGE

I ran out of the room and left my whole family behind to call the nurse. I didn’t know why I left the room and out into the lonely, smelly hospital halls for the comfort of a nurse that I didn’t know that well, but I did. I had all of my family gathered around me, but I still left.
Even though it wasn’t a far walk to the nurse’s station it felt like it was ten miles down a dark dirt road. When I finally reached my desperate destination I yelled out and cried “Hurry it’s the end please come now!”
I ran back and felt the nurse running behind me fearing the worst. She walked into the room and stated it again what I had already said “Yes, it’s over I’m so sorry about your loss.” I kind of knew the nurse who stood in front of me her name was Jill. We had only met a couple of times but still I felt like she could feel my pain or maybe she just possessed the skill of empathy.
There she laid my life right in front of me the images of her face turning blue as she took her last breath. It still haunts me till this day. My mother was a strong Christian woman that thought me the morals she felt that I would need to possess in this now miserable life that I was about to face. Before she died I remembered what she told me something about how everyone has a time. “Everyone has a set amount of time on this earth, Eric, to do what God planted us here to do.” I said “What is it that he planted you on this Earth to do mother?” “To be a missionary and to touch the lives of people that I have been so grateful to have met and share the gospel of the Lord with them.” She said “And that is what I did, and now my time is ending near.”
I wasn’t even sure that I believed in God, but this explanation made more sense to me now than anything I had ever thought of. Who was this God so powerful that he allowed a nine teen year old like myself to loose his mother the only thing that I had left on this earth to rely on.
My family was all gathered at her bed side sobbing at her death. I felt like I had just left my body and was watching from a distant. My father peered at me and my siblings from across the crowed room. I had never witnessed my cold father cry before today. My mother was all he had thirty six years of marriage now over.
I suddenly felt the need to hurl. I ran out the bathroom and found myself wrapped around the ring of a dirty hospital toilet in the family waiting room down the hall. As I sat on the cold broken tiled floor I thought to myself what could have possibly been the cause of my mother’s death? I wasn’t in nursing school even 6 months but I had an idea of what the symptoms resembled.
Could it be? The Doctors called it a cancer, but I knew that her symptoms did not resemble any kind of cancer I had ever read about and they still couldn’t find the tumor. The chart was off limits to me and my family some kind of HIPPA violation the hospital workers mumbled. Her death had resembled a death I had witnessed before, one of a nine year old boy who died with hemophilia, actually he died from pneumonia. The death of this nine year old boy by the name of Brian had made headlines in our small town newspapers, and was the talk of the small nosey town’s gossip. It took place in the early nineties and people didn’t know much about it, I think fear was more cause for talk than the youngster’s death itself.
My thoughts were interrupted by the hospital attendant who looked at me with dismay and said “The Emergency room doctor has pronounced your mother dead, your family and the attending nurse would like to see you at the station to make further arrangements.”
I crawled off of the floor and went to the nurse’s station.

Here is the other form

Please tell me which one to go with. Thanks


*****************
PROLOGE

As hours of darkness neared, the hospital lights peered through the dusk of the small now desolate town of Ville Platte. Eric Doucet awoke from a much needed cat nap. He had not left his mother’s side since she was admitted. “Nurse, Please come quick! Please help her!”
She ran down the long hospital hallway. He followed close behind. She looked around the crowed room, and moved her hair from her face, afraid to state the obvious. “It’s over, she’s gone. I’m sorry for your loss.” She moved slowly across the room, reached above the bed where she lay and turned the oxygen knob down to the off position. She walked over to the other side of the room and everyone jumped as the loud sound of the IV pump was turned off and cut through the silence like a hot knife.
He wasn’t sure why he walked out of the room to seek the comfort of a stranger that wore a tag that bore the name Jill. He didn’t know Jill very well. He had just met her a week before, but somehow she could feel his pain. Maybe she just knew how to empathize with those left behind.
Tina Doucet was a devout Christian woman who always strived to instill in her children the morals that she felt they needed to carry with them through life. Eric remembered what his mother told him before she died. Something about how everyone has a time. “Everyone has only a set amount of time on this Earth, Eric to do what God planted us here to do.” This seemed strange at first. “What is it that you were planted here to do mother?” She smiled with quiet contempt and she rocked back in the old wooden chair that always seemed to squeak just a bit when it moved. “To touch every life and fill those I have been so grateful to have met with the gospel of Jesus Christ.” She touched the well-worn bible on the doily-covered table next to her. “And I have done that so my time here is ending, but yours is just beginning.”
The images of his mother’s blue face still burned in his memory like fire. He held her hand as she took her last slow, peaceful breath. Bob Doucet glanced across the crowed room at his children. His green eyes were blood shot and dark circles followed under them. A thirty six year marriage flushed down a dark, lonely drain. It was awkward for him to be showing any emotion. He had lived his life not shedding a single tear in the presence of another human being.
Eric ran out of the room. The sudden need to hurl lead him into the family room across the hall. With his arms wrapped around the dirty toilet ring and his head almost touching the water beneath him, he continued to think about the cause of his mother’s death. Having been in nursing school for only six months he didn’t remember reading about any cancer cases like his mother’s. Dr. Gomez had told everyone that it had to be cancer. Eric was sure he didn’t even know.
Tina’s death resembled one of a young boy by the name of Brian. Brian was a hemophiliac who died of pneumonia. His death, which occurred in the early nineties, had sparked a flare of controversy through out the small town. Fear was more cause for talk then the actual youngster’s death itself. The chart was off limits to him and the rest of the Doucet family. Something about a HIPPA violation the hospital workers constantly mumbled.
His thoughts were interrupted by the hospital attendant who approached him and spoke with a slow sound of dismay in his voice “your mother has been pronounced by the emergency room doctor. The attending nurse and the rest of your family are waiting for you at the nurse’s station to make further arrangements.”
He slowly crawled off the cold floor of broken tile and made his way to the station.

wow! I think that the second one is so much improved that it's like someone else is writing it. If is the wonderous prospering of someone's advice, stick with it. Well done.

When you first started this, I didn't realize it was the beginning of a murder mystery, laboi_22. Unless the mother is one who has BEEN murdered, you might be better off leaving this for a later time when her words, or her death, have some bearing on the mystery at hand. While it's not required, generally a murder mystery begins with the death of the victim, or of the discovery of the body. Is there a reason why you've begun it here?

Response

While the mother's death is not a murder it ties in with the murders later on in the other chapters. The story is about a ring of sexual deviants that pass on HIV to others who are willing to get it for the sake of having sex with no protection and with numerous partners. Eric's father is part of the ring and arranges someone in New York to sleep with him after hes been drugged giving him the virus which he passes to his mother after an injury his father never wanted that to happen to his wife, but he broke the rules of the ring. The ring was set up to give people willing to get the "gift" and only those willing. His father is shot by the man who gave the virus to Eric because he is plaged by the fact that he let this man break one of the rules of the ring. So I didn't start with a true murder scene but it all will fall into place. Should I take another approach? Please let me know and thanks for the advice.

Justin

I encourage you to break the mold of a typical murder mystery's layout. Be aware that if you seek publication for the work as a traditional mystery, Cathy's comments might be repeated to you by agents/editors, but as long as you're willing to stick to your guns and face rejection (and every writer should be), then I think you should follow the vision inside your head instead of the well trod path.

The second version is better than the first, but it's so much better that I think there could even be a third version in you somewhere...? One thing you might want to do with go back and edit anything that's redundant or too wordy. If you desire I could point out a few spots that I feel would benefit from some pruning. The plot you outlined is pretty daring, so handle the subject with care.

Thanks

Thanks Nathan for your advice. I would love to hear what you think about pruning my story. Just let me know I can send you over a copy of what I have so far. THanks again for the advice!