The Appointment Room

Wondering what time it was, Helena scanned the busy corridors. She didn’t have a watch and there were hardly ever wall clocks any more. Late no doubt. This sort of situation always caused her great anxiety to the point of panic. She hated inconveniencing people, and tardy arrival was something she tried very hard to avoid.

This time, she told herself, I won’t let it get to me. Even if I’m a bit late, I’m usually the first one there and have to sit idly until the rest of them show up. She deserved some leniency.

It was 7:45 a.m. according to the desk clock in the small office she passed. Not too bad, but definitely late. The butterflies or moths or hummingbirds or whatever liked to flutter about her innards when stress was present must have breathed a sigh of relief, relaxed and flown away. For now.

Despite her being 15 minutes late for check-in, the waiting room was empty. It just sat there, unaware that someone had finally entered, yawning at her. “Thank God. No one’s here yet.” Or had they all been seen already? Was she THAT late?

She immediately assured herself that everyone else must also be late today. There were usually four others in the waiting room with her, sometimes accompanied by another – a friend or partner no doubt. She’d never seen the waiting room completely full. Helena wondered what the area was used for through the rest of the day. She and the others were usually leaving the building by 10:a.m. She knew that because she’d asked Shelly once just to reorient herself before finding her way back to the elevators that brought her to the main floor exit. So, ‘no’, she thought, she was absolutely the first one here.

Helena wondered where Shelly was. She was usually in the big room to the back of the unit used for appointments. Feeling her breath beginning to catch in her throat and the return of what were now bumblebees in her stomach, she suddenly thought, “Is this the right day?” Monday. Wednesday. Friday. Those were the days on which she was to make her way to the early morning appointments. It was Monday, she was positive, because it was only yesterday morning she had watched a recording of Saturday Night Live from the night before; and it was now just one day on.

“Stop freaking out, for Christ‘s sake,” she said, nearly audibly.

She sat in the least comfortable of the chairs, which she knew was hard because she’d tried every chair over the course of her two series of appointments, 12 sessions in all each time. She wished she were still asleep in bed, then reminded herself that she hadn’t slept much at all the night before. She’d been awake since 5:15 that morning, scrolling through her cell phone and watching an early morning news channel.

With a great clatter outside the waiting room and an exchange of two voices, one seemingly that of an older person, compared to the second which sounded almost childlike, two people entered the waiting room and took seats close to the door. Mother and child, she wondered? That was a bit odd. Which one was here for the appointment and which for moral support? If she’d had to guess, the appointment was for the younger of the two women; the other had probably driven her here. Were it the other way around, she wondered how the ‘child’ felt about having to accompany her mother to this kind of appointment.

It was an unspoken agreement, if not a rule, in the waiting room, that nobody spoke. There were no casual conversations about sports or the weather among the assembled few. Sometimes, the odd whisper broke the sterile silence as one of a pair sitting together dared a swift comment to his or her companion. But no jocularity, no easy banter of the sort reserved for waiting room chit chat.

Helena went back to her scrolling. Only 8 a.m. and her cell charge was already at 29 per cent? She didn’t think she’d been browsing through her phone that long. Had she actually charged it the night before? Time to stop scrolling because she now had to reserve her charge time so she would have enough to call a cab after her session.

She dared a furtive glance at the two, both now busy with their phones, daring to transgress the floor-staring requirement of inclusion in the room. Before they had fully registered with her, two more people – an elderly man and middle-aged woman – shuffled their respective ways into the room. The woman was laughing at something. Evidently, the man didn’t share her amusement because he was fixated on the floor.

Helena had to control her imagination and the laughter that always began to build somewhere down below her chest whenever she had waited in this room. It seemed so regimented. So many people, silence and never an interaction. Floor staring was mandatory it seemed.

She realized she was smiling, and tried to forestall a giggle that seemed poised for release. She failed. At the sound of the unfamiliar noise, the four people looked up and over to her. Two didn’t stop scrolling and the other two immediately returned to gazing blankly at the floor.

Helena quickly cleared her throat and made a somewhat dramatic attempt to feign a cough or any noise to assure everyone she hadn’t been laughing. Would they think she was laughing at them? Or would they just assume she was insane? That thought made her smile again, but she stifled the urge to laugh aloud. More than likely they’d think there was insanity involved in her behavior. Why wouldn’t they?

Her attention fell heavily to the floor, as her eyes took in the feet of the others sitting along the waiting room walls. When her gaze landed on the mother-child (?) duo, she immediately realized how very wrong her supposition about them had been. One was wearing scruffy slip-on shoes over thin white socks; the other was in fuzzy slippers.

This room is one of the few places where this footwear – usually reserved for private indoor wear – wouldn’t be out of place, Helena mused. Hell, not much would be out of place here as she well knew. She’d long ago stopped wondering about the lives of those who joined her in the waiting room for these sessions. Most of them were similar, though each had its own particular personality. In the past, Helena had wondered her waiting time away trying to decide if the experience of the others were anything like her own. She doubted it; still her curiosity couldn’t help but assign them the back stories she thought fit their appearances. This had been her habit to while away the silent minutes until the girl whose name she learned was Jess had died. Helena felt ashamed that her musings about the girl had suggested that her own situation was the more difficult. “I was in her place 40 years ago,” Helena had thought, “and have all those years until now for everything to get so much worse that I’m here with these people.”

Jess, Shelly had told her when Helena heard about her passing, had just turned 17. She had been a student at a well-known and highly prestigious local school where she excelled in most every subject and was a star on the soccer field. She had so much going for her, Shelly observed. Helena agreed and, when she learned that Jess was being scouted for a professional soccer career, her passing seemed all the more cruel and unfair.

“We just never know,” Shelly had said. “No we don’t,” Helena echoed her.

None of us ever knows how bad it might get and that’s why we’re all here. We’re so bloody afraid of what could happen, what each day might bring and we so want things to be different. That’s why we’re all here. Helena began picking at a hangnail.

“Carson.” Shelly gestured toward the sole man in the room. “Come on in.”

Carson stood up stiffly and teetered a bit before recovering his balance. He walked slowly, hesitating with each step, to the door Shelly was holding open for him. “Howya doin’ today, Carson?” If Carson answered, Helena didn’t know. He was a mumbler. Most of them here were mumblers, except for the odd one who might erupt in a random shout occasionally. She herself, though, was a mumbler. People had told her that as long as she could remember. “Speak up!” was a constant refrain throughout her life. As easy as that may seem, Helena had never mastered it. There had been a few periods when things seemed to be going well that she had managed to oblige, speaking much more loudly and animatedly than usual. When she’d sounded cheery and gave the impression that life was just great. It hadn’t happened often, and she wondered if that were the real her. The real Helena.

The door of the unit opened and Carson made his way slowly back to his chair. Shelly pointed at the woman beside him. “Sandra, your turn.” The woman looked up and gave Shelly a begrudging smile. Shelly always seemed to be in a fabulous mood, a breath of fresh air in the stagnant pall of the appointment rooms. Helena had always wondered if it were just a brave face. After all, it was her job to maintain a light-hearted atmosphere. Light-hearted, but deadly serious, Helena reflected. She immediately thought of Jess.

“C’mon Sandra, let’s shake a leg.” Shelly was beaming from the doorway. Sandra stood up and headed toward Shelly. She said something to Shelly but Helena couldn’t make it out. Sandra, of course, was a mumbler.

“Helena, I’m keeping you to the last.” Shelly spoke directly to her, eliciting from her the ready smile Helena kept hidden for such moments and certain people. It was all a ruse, of course, and people like Shelly surely knew that. Sandra disappeared into the back unit, the door closing firmly behind her.

It was another 15 minutes until Shelly opened the door and curled her pointer finger at Helena. “All good now,” she said. “Come On In!” she beckoned, adding a comedic styling to her invitation.

As Helena stood, pocketing her phone, Shelly stood in the doorway, the light from the unit spilling out over her shoulder. “Always last, eh m’dear?”

“Lucky me.” Helena hadn’t lost her forced smile.

“How’s the veins today, then?” Shelly asked.

“Unco-operative, I’m sure,” Helena mumbled as she walked through the doorway.

The door closed behind the two women.