The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  The worn green leather couch sighed as she took her seat. The crying woman startled. Veronica briefly lifted her eyes off the collection of reading material on the coffee table, and for a tiny moment, the women’s eyes caught. It didn’t take a specialist to see the pain in the middle-aged woman’s face: dark circles under her eyes from the sleepless nights grief brought, creases along the sides of her mouth only elongating her frown.

  Veronica tried to reason why the stranger was lost in a mass of tears and half-repressed sobs, but as she considered the options—cancer, divorce, bankruptcy, addiction—she started to fight back tears of her own. There was so much pain in the world; she couldn’t figure out why more people weren’t weeping constantly.

  “Hey there.” The woman spoke with a soft Southern accent that matched most of the inhabitants of Sanford, North Carolina, but not the image Veronica had been developing of an out-of-work lunch lady. “I’m sorry. I’m a total mess. Today is one of the hard ones, you know?”

  Veronica did know. Hard days were the ones when she couldn’t stop the tears or, even worse, the anger from robbing her of any normal interactions with other humans, even her mother and her child. But she hadn’t signed up for group therapy, and there was no way she was going to open up to a stranger unless the person had a jumbled collection of letters behind her name.

  “I’m sorry,” Veronica whispered, trying to copy the way everyone said it to her, with sympathy but also a deep desire not to get involved any more than necessary. She reassessed the magazines and picked one with a glossy photo of a politician on the front, hoping to mimic the man in the corner and escape any interactions but also dodge any “feel good” articles or columns on parenting.

  “Nah, it’s okay. Guess we all are here for a reason, right?”

  Veronica pressed her lips together, unsure what to say and desperate to dive into the anonymity of her magazine. Just as the silence went from awkward to uncomfortable, the door next to the receptionist’s window opened. A petite woman with dark hair and a warm complexion smiled as if they’d been friends since second grade. Lisa Masters looked just like her picture on psychology.com. There were five or six therapists in the practice, but from the profiles her mom had compiled, Lisa’s was the only one that listed postpartum depression as a specialty.

  “You must be Veronica. Are you ready?” Her smile was genuine, at least from what Veronica could decipher, and she was a pretty good judge of those kinds of things.

  “Uh, yeah, I think so.” With a little nod to the lunch-lady woman, Veronica stood, relieved to be out of the frying pan but feeling remarkably as though she’d jumped into the fire.

  “You are welcome to take that with you,” Lisa said, pointing to the unread magazine still clutched in Veronica’s hand.

  “Oh, no . . . no . . . I . . .” She tossed it onto the table, wiped her hands on her thighs, made sure her phone and keys were safe inside her pockets, and then straightened a strand of sloppily styled blond hair. “I’m ready.”

  “All right, follow me.” Lisa waved and started to walk. They made small talk through the hall as Veronica followed her therapist to the door of her office.

  Her therapist. Veronica cringed at the phrase. Then again, maybe help was on the other side of that door, or just as likely embarrassment or maybe even a complete waste of time. She straightened her shoulders and pictured Sophie smiling as she tried to put her toes into her mouth or laughing when Veronica stuck out her tongue. Sophie was worth it. Only time would tell what would happen in that room, but at least Veronica could prove she’d tried.

  After the pleasantries—generic talk of Veronica’s career and then the compliments that usually followed any discussion of Veronica’s work illustrating the popular children’s book series Mia’s Travels—Lisa clasped her hands in front of her and sighed as if she were clearing the air. Veronica’s temples pounded, and she picked at the skin around her thumbnail like she always did when anxiety overwhelmed her. She used to have beautifully manicured nails, but now they were so short they bled when she bit them.

  Lisa was watching. Veronica slipped her hands under her legs to hide the evidence of her habit, the only outer symbol of her internal struggle. She’d sounded almost normal when they talked about her career, but that would all end very soon.

  “So, Veronica, what brings you here today?”

  She’d considered this moment, even practiced it out loud in the car on the way over.

  “I have a little girl, six months old now. Her name is Sophie.” Lisa smiled at her as though she’d already seen the baby. Veronica hesitated, shifted in her seat, and then continued. “I love her. No, I adore her, I really do, but I’m having a hard time with the transition into motherhood. I . . . I thought it would be different. I thought I would be different, I guess. I’m scared all the time, that I’ll do something wrong or that I’ve already done something wrong.”

  “Hm, so I’m hearing you say that you have a lot of anxiety when it comes to parenting, is that right?”

  Veronica balled her fists tighter, trying not to be annoyed. “It’s more than some anxiety. When she cries, I shut down. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I want to run away. That’s why my mom had to move in. I can’t . . .” A fat, unexpected tear left a dark blob on Veronica’s pants when she blinked. “I can’t pick up my daughter. I can’t even touch her.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Six weeks later

  Veronica took the keys out of the ignition and turned to grab the jumbled pile of mismatched cloth grocery bags from the back seat. After her weekly session with Lisa, she still had forty-five minutes to get home before Sophie would be up from her nap. She looped her hand through the twisted straps and turned to leave, but one pulled her back. The green-and-white library bag she’d gotten when she renewed her library card was hooked over the side of Sophie’s empty car seat. Veronica yanked until it flew off.

  She leaned back to examine the seat and assess the damage. It was the best seat money could buy. She’d had it on her registry, but no one had splurged for it at either her friend or her family baby shower. So when Nick’s office gave them a gift card, they’d both agreed that safety was most important and used the whole amount on the fancy seat. But now the empty chair held an even heavier meaning. Lisa had sent Veronica home with an assignment—take Sophie on a drive, just the two of them. Even after six weeks of therapy, the idea still made Veronica’s heart pound.

  But she’d made progress in other ways, or at least that’s what Lisa tried to remind her of at their most recent appointment. With the help of Lisa’s assignments, Veronica had sung a song to Sophie from the threshold of her room, posted a picture of Sophie on her private social media account, and stayed in the house during one of her colic attacks rather than going for a run. Just last week she skipped her middle-of-the-night alarm for pumping so she could get more sleep. Lisa called them “healthy choices,” and Veronica was trying to make more and more of them. She flung the cluster of bags into a corralled shopping cart, wrapped her hands around the worn red handle, and then headed for the supermarket.

  She’d save the car ride for next week because today she was going to get formula for the first time ever. Formula. It used to be a dirty word in her house. When Sophie was born, Veronica made Nick throw out all the sample containers from the hospital so she wouldn’t be tempted to give up on breastfeeding. Turned out she didn’t have to worry; the lactation consultant at the hospital called Veronica a natural. But that only lasted until Nick . . .

  The automatic doors of the grocery store slid open, and a cool rush of AC beckoned her in. Even though she’d recently moved to Sanford, her old house was only a few miles away in the small town of Broadway. Sanford looked like a busy metropolis compared to Broadway, where your only option for milk or bread was from the Dollar General, where everything definitely cost more than a dollar. Now she had the luxury of an actual supermarket. The Piggly Wiggly was full of the familiar sounds of carts clanking and mumbled announ
cements over an ancient speaker, which helped calm the growing tension between Veronica’s shoulder blades. There was some order to this madness—a list, a sale ad, a procedure for lines and checkout. It was nothing like motherhood, which surprisingly had very few predictable outcomes despite all her attempts at preparation.

  Veronica shook her head. Lisa was trying to help her with this overwhelming load of guilt and panic that she couldn’t seem to escape. If she could just get out from under it a little bit, maybe she could be the kind of mom she desperately wanted to be. The kind of mom she’d promised Sophie she’d be while she grew in her belly.

  After grabbing supplies for this week’s round of homemade baby food from the produce section, Veronica entered the baby aisle. The only way she was going to get through this challenge was to face it head-on. The longer she delayed, the easier it was to just ignore the idea completely.

  Veronica located the can of formula she’d researched and decided was the best—organic with an iron supplement as well as DHA and ARA. Then, trying not to think about it too hard, she wrapped her fingers around the can and tossed it into her slowly filling cart. It was just powder; it contained nutrients and vitamins her daughter needed and Veronica’s body was struggling to create, but as it settled in between the butternut squash and bag of avocados, some part of Veronica’s self-admitted messed-up brain screamed the illogical word: failure.

  No, a failure would be a mother who let her child go hungry, or at least that was what Lisa told her, and Veronica couldn’t bear to see that hidden horror on her therapist’s face again. She’d seen it a few times, the silent judgment that even a practiced therapist had a hard time covering. The first time was when she told Lisa that she hadn’t touched her daughter since she was two weeks and four days old. She saw it then. She saw it again when she told her about the dark thoughts that entered her mind when Sophie’s colic set in and the crying started. And again when she finally told her about the night that Nick went out in the car with the baby in the back seat and only Sophie came back home.

  Veronica assessed the cart—diapers, rice cereal, veggies, the yogurt puffs Sophie liked. She might not be able to hold her daughter, but that didn’t stop her from taking care of her. She filled her every need and made sure she was well provided for, and soon she’d be able to hold her in her arms again.

  The back wheels of the cart skidded as she turned into the checkout lane. Usually she’d consider self-checkout, but that would take actual thinking, and her brain was nearing posttherapy shutdown. It was a new thing—it only started happening after her first visit to Lisa—but the mental and emotional exhaustion after a session was real, and Veronica sometimes wondered why she didn’t plan her schedule better so she could come home and take a nap of her own before Sophie woke up.

  Today she’d finish the laundry and get the squash steamed, mashed, and in an ice-cube tray to freeze for storage; she’d sterilize all the bottles from the day; pump at four o’clock, seven o’clock, ten o’clock, and once in the middle of the night just to keep up her supply; and finally bleach out the diaper pail. Barb always used to say that moms didn’t get naps, and that saying “sleep when the baby sleeps” was just something people said to make pregnant women think they would sleep again.

  Veronica shook her head and started to load the belt with her items. Napping didn’t bring her comfort anyway, not with the nightmares filled with images of broken glass, bleached-out hospital hallways, people dressed in black and crying—always Sophie’s cries filled Veronica’s sleep, even when Sophie was playing contentedly with Veronica’s mother in the other room. No, what she needed was a good, long run. When she was a teenager and wanted to get away from her mom’s newest boyfriend, who was always inevitably screaming about something insignificant while her mom nearly killed herself trying to make him happy, she’d slip out the back door and go for a run. If she ran hard enough and long enough, the pain in her legs and lungs would erase the sound of a man degrading her mother and the even more sickening sight of her mother taking it as if she deserved it. Worked well with baby screams too.

  “Looks like someone has a baby at home.” Lost in thought, Veronica jumped at the deep voice behind her. Typically, if she kept to herself in public and looked completely frigid and disinterested in any type of human communication, people left her alone. But there were always the ones who wanted to tell you how much you’d miss these years as a parent right at the moment your five-month-old had an explosive diaper, or the friendly bystanders who noticed how tired you looked and made sure to tell you all about it.

  She forced what she hoped looked like a smile and glanced behind her. A tall, handsome man in a jet-black business suit and blue tie stared back at her. Her heart jumped because she recognized him from Lisa’s waiting room. He was in his midforties, at least, but was aging well, his hair only gray at the temples and the fine lines around his eyes making him look distinguished. No ring on his left hand, and his skin was a rich shade of not exactly tan, but not I-burn-after-five-minutes white either. To top it all off, he held nothing but a blue box of tampons. He must have recognized her from the therapists’ office; they’d seen each other once a week for six weeks now. Why would he talk to her here? She took a breath, stood up straight, and tried to act normal.

  “Looks like you’re shopping for a special someone too.” Veronica pointed at the box of feminine-hygiene products with the tube of toothpaste in her hand before putting it onto the moving black belt.

  The man didn’t even blush; he just tapped the box against his fingertips and smirked as though buying tampons at a grocery store was his favorite hobby.

  “My daughter. She’s thirteen. She texted me a crying face, an angry mask, and a drawing of a Hershey’s bar. After I responded with a very clever ‘Huh?’ she told me exactly what she needed me to bring home. It wasn’t even chocolate. Though I think I should toss some in for good measure, don’t you?”

  When Veronica put the plastic divider behind her groceries, the waiting-room man leaned across the array of baby products and produce and grabbed a bar of chocolate. He was close enough that she could pick up the masculine scent of his cologne, or maybe it was his deodorant. Either way, it reminded her of Nick and made her take another step down the aisle of the checkout counter.

  “You must be a good dad,” Veronica said without stopping to realize that she was now entering a full-on conversation with the man. Hopefully this wouldn’t mean he’d start talking to her every week. She could take chats at the supermarket, but Gillian, the lunch-lady-esque waiting-room companion, already pushed her limits there. “Not a lot of guys would be okay with that kind of thing.” After her parents’ divorce, she’d only seen her own father for a week or two each summer until he moved to Alaska when she was fourteen and then dropped off the face of the earth completely until he passed a few years ago.

  “Nah, times are changing. I’m sure your husband would do the same for your daughter.” He pointed at the pink pacifiers traveling down the belt to the clerk checking her items.

  Veronica’s face flushed. She glanced down at her left hand; the platinum setting with a 2.3-karat diamond sitting heavily in the center stared back at her. Recently, Lisa asked her why she still wore her ring. Veronica explained that at first it was because she missed Nick, missed being married and the idea of a loving husband. But then she had to admit that there was a part of her that wanted to keep up appearances. She didn’t want people to think she was a single mom who got knocked up and had a kid out of wedlock. Damn it. When she’d said it out loud in that session, it sounded really judgmental. God, even thinking through it now made her cringe.

  In the past, she’d play along with the farce, pretend she had a loving husband waiting at home for her, pretend she could pick up her daughter and that she knew how to calm her cries. She twisted the ring around her finger with her thumb. She loved how it felt there, wished she never had to take it off, but there was also something different about today, about this man. He kn
ew she had issues—no one went to a therapist for a source of social interaction—but he still talked to her as if she was a regular person. Then again, he must have some issues too, since he didn’t seem to miss an appointment, but after chatting, he seemed so . . . normal. He made her feel as though it didn’t matter that she couldn’t hold her daughter and that she still fantasized about waking up to Nick by her side. As the checker asked if she wanted to use the bags in her cart, Veronica glanced back and told the truth for the first time in a very long time.

  “Actually, I’m a widow.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Veronica could hear the crying through the front door. Worried when she drove up that too many open and shut doors would wake Sophie, she’d tried to get all the groceries in with just one trip from the car. Her arms were so weighed down with her shopping bags that both hands were tingly and heavy, like useless mannequin appendages. But apparently she was too late, and Sophie had woken early from her nap.

  Damn it. Every time she left Lisa’s office, Veronica was sure that she was cured. The whole way home she’d think about walking in, picking up her baby the same way any normal mother would, and just going on with life as if Nick were sitting in the other room. But then, like today, she’d hear the crying and her pulse would skyrocket, skin tingling as if she’d been smacked, and the permanent pit she already carried in her stomach grew deeper, like a bottomless abyss.

  Today part of her wanted to turn around and get back in the car, pretend she’d been stuck in traffic or that lines at the store were unusually long. Her mom would probably know she was lying, but she also probably wouldn’t care. Barbra DeCarlo was increasingly tired of her daughter’s issues. For some reason she couldn’t seem to grasp that depression wasn’t something you just snapped out of.