Waiting

My skin started to itch as the automatic doors slid shut behind me. The air stung my eyes the way that they stung when I opened them under water in the chlorine-filled pool, but this time I wasn’t sure how much that was due to the chemicals and how much was just me. A girl who can’t be much older than me, she must be here for an internship or extra credit, looks up from the reception desk. She smiles at me and her teeth are so white they match the clinic walls.

“Hello,” she sounds like a cheerleader, “do you have an appointment?” She kinda looks like a cheerleader too.

I give her my ID, check in for my appointment, and she directs me to the left to another white room with 4 rows of sterile blue chairs. I have to wait. It won’t be long, she says. I don’t believe her. There doesn’t seem to be many other patients, but I haven’t seen any doctors or nurses either. Maybe they’re low-staff on Saturdays.

There’s only one other woman in the clinic. She looks old. Well, not like old old, but too old to be here. Too old to be doing what I’m about to do. I almost ask her if she works here as I turn into the room, but there’s no way. She’s wearing dark blue bell-bottom jeans and a blush pink blouse. A giant multi-coloured tote bag rests on her shoulder, a book open in the palms of her hands. She looks like an elementary school teacher. As my eyes travel upward I take in the thick curls of her black hair, the warm tone of her skin and big brown eyes that stare right back at me.

Wait.

Right back at me.

Caught, I feel my neck flush as heat travels up towards my cheeks. I look away and shuffle over to the row of chairs opposite hers. We’re facing each other, but she sits on the left side of the room, and I sit on the right. Not so far as to seem like I’m avoiding her, but I also don’t want to be close enough to seem like I want to make small talk. When I dare to look back up at her, her gaze has traveled back to her book, swiftly moving back and forth across the pages. I sigh in relief, then frown. I almost curse out loud. I forgot my air pods. With a sigh I pull up instagram and resign myself to listening to the elevator music playing far too softly from the speakers in the ceiling and watching silent reels. But when the feed finally loads on the low quality clinic wifi all the way out here, I’m greeted with the smiling faces of my friends, my boyfriend, my family, and I’m reminded that none of them are here with me, none of them know where I am, what I’m doing. I told them I was visiting my aunt for the weekend; she agreed to cover for me. I couldn’t tell mom, but I could tell her.

Against my better judgment, I open my messages app.

Mom: Be safe! Let me know when you get there, love you <3

Sarah: Hey girl! Since you couldn’t make it to practice coach told me to let you know monday’s practice is cancelled

Sarah: So sad you couldn’t make it to hoco, we miss uuuuu I’ll send you updates if there’s any drama ;)

Sarah: Oh! And say hi to Aunt Tess for me

Danni: Did we have homework for history?

Josh:

My hand hovers over his name. I can read the beginning of the message.

Hey babe, drive safe!! miss you already, i don’t know-

I want to read the rest, but also I don’t. My eyes start to sting again. This time it’s definitely me. I turn off my phone and look up at the too-bright lights. I stare until I see black dots dancing around my vision. When I let my gaze drift back down the lady is looking at me, an obvious furrow in her brow. She raises her hand slowly in an ‘OK’ sign and lifts one eyebrow. A silent question. I nod quickly and look back down at my phone. I don’t turn it back on.

I hear her get up, and I look up thinking she’s being taken in for her appointment, hoping to catch a glimpse of the doctor. I’m really hoping for a nice doctor. Like George from Grey’s Anatomy. There’s no doctor. She makes her way to the vending machines in the hall. There’s a loud bang on the window beside me and I start, quickly looking to the side. Vaguely, I can hear that there’s people yelling, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.

I get up to get a better look, but as soon as I do I wish I hadn’t. There’s a small group of people gathered in front of the door. Some of them have signs. I see what they’d thrown at the window lying broken on the ground. There are tons of them. Model fetuses. Like the ones they show you in Health class. I’m not quite sure what they’re yelling, but looking at a middle aged woman with a bun so tight it pulled the skin of her forehead to straighten out some of the thin lines there and who looked like she’d just picked up her kids from soccer practice, I think I can read the word ‘murderer’ on her lips. There’s a security guard trying desperately to break up the crowd. Another guard holds down the area directly in front of the door, making sure none of them get in. I’m really glad I got here before them. I don’t know how I’m gonna get out, maybe they’ll let me stay here until they leave.

Then I see another girl, tall, blonde, she has 2 pink clips in her hair holding it out of her face. Melanie. She’s in my Tuesday English class. Quickly, I turn away and move my body to the side, out of sight of the window. I lean my back against the cool white wall and let myself slide down it slowly. Or at least I think it was slow. I feel dizzy. I might throw up. It’s fine. I’m allowed to be here. This is legal. This is my choice. She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t get an opinion. None of them do. I’m tempted to go down there and scream at them all to leave. Maybe I could call the police on them, although I doubt that would do anything. The woman from before coughs and I nearly jump out of my skin. She’s sitting in the same place as she had been when I got here, an open bag of chips in her hand, the other on her book. She doesn’t look at me, or the disturbance downstairs. We might as well not have even been here.

I put my head in my hands, focus on a dot in the speckled pattern on the white floor and take deep breaths. In. Count to 10. Out. Count to 10. In. Count to 10. I let out a long sigh and push myself off the floor. I make my way back to my original seat, careful to stay out of the window’s view. Melanie probably wouldn’t look up. None of them probably will. But she could. I stop short when I notice a KitKat on my seat with a post-it stuck to it. I look around, thinking someone else must’ve come in while I was on the ground, but there’s no one here. Just me and the woman reading her book. I make my way over and grab it as I sit down. Eat something. It’ll help.

I stare at the woman. I stare for a long time, she must be able to feel it. She ignores me, turns the page of her book. There’s another loud commotion downstairs. I take my seat and pick up the KitKat along with the note. She has pretty handwriting, a soft, looping script. Then I peel open the wrapper and break off a stick of chocolate wafer. I swear that first bite is the best bite of chocolate I’ve ever had. Ever. I relax into my chair a little more and devour the chocolate bar in less than 30 seconds. When I look back up at the woman she’s smiling at me. I smile back and wave the KitKat wrapper in thanks. She nods and goes back to her book.

My knee starts to bounce a bit in impatience. I want to look at my phone, but every time I raise it and the light turns on I put it back down. Instead I read the posters on the walls. Most of them are about contraception or STD prevention. The man on the wall across from me smiles and winks conspiratorially as he gestures downwards to a very real bowl of condoms on a table placed strategically below him. There’s a handwritten note on the bowl that says “Take one, they’re FREE!”

I close my eyes and try to just listen to the faint music wafting through the waiting room, but I can barely hear it over the sound of the receptionist typing around the corner. What kind of keyboard is that? It’s so loud. I can still here the muffled sound of shouting outside. If the other woman in the waiting room can hear it, she ignores it. But maybe that’s just me, just the nerves. I can hear every turn of every page of the woman’s book as she reads.

I open my eyes back up and try to catch a glimpse of the cover. It doesn’t take very long for her to notice, and she tilts the book up so I can read the title. I crack a smile. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She definitely has teacher vibes. I go to say something, but she’s still reading; it feels wrong to disturb her, so I make my way back to reception to ask for a pen. The girl sitting there gives me another blinding smile as she hands it to me. Still at the reception counter, I flip over the note that says to eat something and scribble on the back: I liked the movie better.

I drop the note carefully into the seat beside her as I walk back to my original seat. I know this isn’t a class. We don’t have assigned seats. But I sit there anyway. It seems like the right place to sit. Far enough away to make it clear that we’re strangers, but also close enough to not indicate any kind of hostility. I’m reminded of a classroom though. My third grade teacher had a rainbow bag like that. I feel a little bit like a kid again, passing notes in class, trying desperately not to let the teacher see, terrified she’ll read it out loud if she catches us.

Suddenly, I’m horrified. I know it’s not likely, but I’m reminded again how much she looks like a teacher herself and for just a moment, I imagine her reading the note out loud. There isn’t really anyone to hear, aside from maybe the receptionist and perhaps a doctor or a nurse if they happen to be close enough, but the thought still has me tensing, ready to stand up and retrieve the note before she gets to read it. It feels wrong to disrupt the calm semi-silence that sits in the waiting room with us. Before I can even really start shifting to get up though, she gets to the end of her chapter and closes the book, using her thumb to keep her place. She picks up the note, reads it, smiles, and places it in her book like a bookmark. She doesn’t even look at me. I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

As the woman continues to read, I take her in and reevaluate my initial impression of her. It really isn’t my place to be deciding what kind of person should or shouldn’t be here. I feel a sort of kinship with this woman, who’d come here to do the same thing I had. We weren’t the same age, clearly she had to be well into her professional career whereas I’d only just started my second year of university. I hadn’t even submitted my final choice of which major I’d be pursuing. Professor Davenport had given me an extension along with an incredibly long email that basically boiled down to Get your shit together and figure out what you want to do with your life. Maybe she didn’t know what she wanted either. Or maybe the fact that we were here meant we knew exactly what we wanted. We wanted to be free.

I decide her backstory for her as she checks her phone. I decide she’s texting her sister who’s going to come pick her up after this because they’re so close. She wants to go home and keep working on the novel she’s been writing when she’s not at the school, teaching. She drinks coffee, not tea. Her sister is more of the career type, works in marketing or something like that.

When I run out of ideas, I make a mental note to bring a book with me wherever I went from now on. A silent promise to never find myself in this position again, without my phone and left to counting the spots made by the speckled pattern on the ceiling. I’d gotten to 256 when a small cough drew my attention. The woman was standing before me, closed book in hand and multi-coloured tote bag slung over her shoulder. Was she leaving? She opened her mouth to say something but then-

“Caroline Washington?” A voice called from the far hallway, the one opposite the reception desk that led to the rest of the clinic. A doctor, middle aged and wearing the standard white cloak and blue scrubs, looking like he’d walked straight off the set of Grey’s Anatomy was standing just inside the waiting room, clipboard in hand. He wasn’t really a George I would say, maybe more of a Karev. He was reading from the page he had open, flipping the pages back over as he looked up. The woman in front of me nodded and started to step towards him. Then she hesitated. She looked back at me and placed her copy of Pride and Prejudice on the seat beside me. I went to say something, but the smile on her face stopped me. She already new, just as I did, what we were going to say to each other. It didn’t need saying.

Good luck.

She turned and walked over to the doctor, and I watched them turn the corner and disappear from view. The waiting room felt far too empty without her. All of a sudden I was all alone. The scratch of turning pages, the slight creek whenever she adjusted her position in her chair and the soft sound of breathing, the occasional sigh were all replaced by the faint hum of the air conditioner and the all too quiet elevator music playing through the speakers in the ceiling. Even the receptionist had stopped typing. I drew my legs in and crossed them beneath me. The sliver of skin exposed at my ankles where my jeans stopped and my socks had yet to begin felt cold in the sterile air-conditioned air. I went to pick up the book and a piece of paper slid out from between the pages. It was the note from earlier. When I turned it over to see the message I had written myself, there was a reply scribbled below it in Caroline’s looping script.

Well then, maybe you should read it again.

I laughed. Out loud. The receptionist craned her neck, looking over at me from behind her desk.

“Is everything alright?” She called.

“Yes,” I said back, trying to be loud enough for her to hear, “sorry about that.”

She shrugged and rolled her chair back into place, resuming her work. Still smiling, I opened the book to the first page. The inner cover was stamped in red and said:

Property of

Burlington Public Library

Maybe she wasn’t a teacher. Maybe a librarian. Or just someone who liked books. Maybe I’d see her there. Maybe I want to. I’d have to go either way to return the book when I was finished with it. I turned to chapter one and started reading.

The End.