The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  “We’ll see.” She resettled herself in her seat and thought of a way to change the subject. “So I let my mom feed Sophie a bottle of formula last night.”

  Veronica studied her therapist’s face carefully to see if she would respond. Would it be joy or relief or—the most feared mask, the one she imagined on the faces of those around her nearly constantly—judgment. But Lisa’s face was almost always calm. She hid behind a kind void that was safe but also infuriatingly blank, only letting brief moments of shock break through when Veronica surprised her with a new symptom like how she was starting to wake from her nightmares in different locations than where she’d fallen asleep. The other day she awoke from the dream about the night of the accident, screaming and sitting in the front seat of her car in the garage. Lisa’s horrified concern was easy to see then, and Veronica hadn’t even told her that the car was running.

  “Oh, well, that is news. How do you feel about that?” Lisa leaned forward, polished silver pen clutched in her hand. Hands were notoriously difficult to draw, but there was something beautiful about Lisa’s hands, her long fingers and short, polished nails, that made Veronica dream of drawing them. Or maybe thinking about how she’d draw Lisa’s hands kept her from thinking about the panic she’d felt when her mom walked away with the bottle full of formula and came back with it empty. It was like when the hot bartender at the pub they used to frequent in New York had a huge crush on Nick. Anytime Veronica left his side, she’d be there pushing up her boobs, touching his arm, and laughing as if Nick were a professional comic. Even though he looked more like a trapped animal than a man flirting with a curvy bartender, she couldn’t help the touch of jealousy and rejection she’d always feel as she walked back from the bathroom. This felt similar.

  “It was harder than I thought it would be. I feel like I’m giving up the only way I’ve been able to take care of my baby. Someone else’s arms comfort her. Someone else’s voice soothes her. Someone else’s hands dress her and change her, but it was my milk that kept her alive and helped her grow. But now . . . she doesn’t even need that.” Those twin emotions of rejection and jealousy started to build up inside Veronica, and the calming voice that used to keep her from losing it on Tasha the bartender wasn’t speaking up today. Because unlike Nick, who had no interest in the flirty woman pursuing him, Sophie didn’t even notice the difference between the formula and the breast milk. Both bottles filled her stomach and came back empty. “Let’s be honest—she doesn’t need me at all.”

  Veronica was growing upset. There were only three minutes left on the clock before her session was up, and she knew it. The plan was to tell Lisa about the formula right as they were walking out the door and make sure not to mention how hard it was to give away the only thing that made her feel like a mother. Veronica hated going over her time, and Lisa was very punctual, so it should’ve worked. But she had to go and open her big mouth. Now Lisa didn’t seem to notice the clock or the time or anything else in the room but Veronica and how she was biting at the cuticles around the nub of her thumbnail. She tasted blood on her tongue, and instead of compelling her to stop, it made her bite a little harder, the coppery taste distracting her from the pain of failure. She didn’t mind physical pain; deep down she felt as though she should be punished, but since everyone wanted to be so infuriatingly forgiving toward her, she had to take the job on herself.

  “Hey, hey, stop. Listen, that is why you’re here, Veronica.” Lisa pulled a few tissues out of the box to her left and passed them over, glancing at the blood gathering around Veronica’s nail. “If you let me, I can help you. You don’t have to feel like an outsider in Sophie’s life anymore. You are not replaceable.” The neutral void of Lisa’s features filled with a sincere expression of concern. She shook the tissues at Veronica like a white flag. Her voice was soft and caring as Veronica tended to her self-inflicted injury. “These thoughts are worrisome to me. I know you said that you don’t think about hurting yourself or Sophie anymore, but I need you to promise me something. Even if it is a brief flicker of a moment, even if just one idea or thought or plan slips into your conscious mind, you will call me, and if you can’t get in touch with me, then tell me you’ll call the suicide prevention lifeline.” She shuffled through her binder again and brought up another card, this one with glossy red lettering, and held it out.

  “I’m not having bad thoughts.” Veronica snapped the card out of Lisa’s fingertips, knowing it wasn’t going to fly if she rejected this one. There was a rule about therapists and their confidentiality—it was only ironclad if they didn’t think you were going to hurt yourself or others. She wasn’t planning on hurting anyone. Not anymore, anyway. She used to think it would be better if she and Sophie joined Nick in heaven, but when she once suggested the idea to her mother, logically, as if she were explaining why it was better to be an LLC than an S corp, Barb had threatened to call the police and try to get her committed. Veronica wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  She wasn’t ready to tell Lisa about that yet, not when her therapist was already handing her suicide hotline numbers. Her sessions were completely safe and confidential; Veronica could control how much she told and what image she shared with Lisa, unless she broke one of those two tricky cardinal rules by appearing a threat to herself or others. Then all bets were off and the hospital was no longer just an option offered; it could be required, by force if necessary.

  Lisa nodded, assessing her carefully with a reserved and practiced eye. “I know, I know. But it is important, Veronica. That promise means something.”

  “Fine, I promise.” Veronica stood, ready to run out the door today instead of taking the slow stroll to the lobby like they usually did. Gillian was usually waiting for her there after seeing her therapist, Stacey. She’d pretend to read a magazine so they could “run into each other” and walk to the parking lot together. As far as she could tell, Mark, the suited mystery man from Piggly Wiggly, attended the single-parent support group at the end of the hall that Lisa was always trying to push her into. It was run by a social worker in the practice and sparsely attended, but Mark always seemed to be there. He hadn’t been there this afternoon, which was puzzling yet also a relief, but who knew what his schedule was like.

  There would be no strolling today. She just needed to get out and fast, making her wish she still had her running shoes on from her morning workout instead of the wedges that added two inches to her height but also made her feet sweat.

  “I will call you, but I also promise you have nothing to worry about.” She threw her diaper bag/purse over her shoulder. Lisa was left behind, stunned and still sitting in her overstuffed leather chair.

  Usually Veronica would stop by the front desk and pay her copay before heading out to the lobby and attempting to evade the ever-friendly Gillian. But today she just kept walking. She’d pay next time. She rushed past the waving receptionist, past the surprisingly empty waiting room, and even past the elevators until she reached the stairs.

  The urge to run grew inside her like it did when Sophie’s screams echoed through the house. It was almost as if each footstep in the cavernous stairwell were like another one of Sophie’s cries. But just as she couldn’t ever really escape her own daughter, she couldn’t escape her own feet either.

  Rushing now, her heart pounding and sweat building at her hairline, Veronica ignored the way her angled shoes dug into her toes and pretended that she didn’t look as insane as she felt. As soon as she broke through the windowed door, the heat from the June afternoon not helping her sweat issue, she beelined for the closest patch of grass she could find. Her footsteps were muffled by the soft earth and blades of grass, and she collapsed onto the manicured lawn.

  The normal sounds of the outdoors were calming, and even the early summer sun felt like hot kisses across her skin. Her pulse slowed and her rapid breathing soon matched. These panic attacks were like a madness that came over her, crawling up her arms and down her spine. While in the middle of an episo
de, it was hard to perceive the beginning or conceptualize an end. All she could see was the choking, blinding panic of the moment. But the fog was dissipating, and the control of her faculties was returning bit by bit.

  Unfortunately, she also knew that even when the panic left and her mind cleared, the hollow ache of sadness from losing Nick would never completely leave—ever. It was her constant companion and in a twisted way reminded her that if she hadn’t loved him so deeply, then it wouldn’t hurt this badly. Sometimes she was proud of that pain.

  With her wits finally about her, Veronica straightened her shoulders and stood, stumbling as she reached her full height. She leaned over to grab her bag and tried to stealthily glance around the parking lot for anyone who might have seen her lose it on the back lawn of the medical clinic. The only thing worse than being crazy was having other people see that you were crazy.

  There were three cars besides hers in the parking lot. With pursed lips and closed eyes, she took a deep breath and then another and then another, until her lungs felt nearly as big as balloons and the kink between her shoulder blades unwound into a loose coil instead of a spring ready to pop. She opened her eyes; sanity was restored.

  Veronica walked deftly from the grass back to the sidewalk, forcing herself to ignore the clap of her shoes against the pavement. She clutched the door handle on her Prius; the keyless entry popped open the lock as the superheated metal nearly burned her palm. She knew she should flinch back, but she didn’t; she let the burn settle in and spread from her palm to her fingertips, hoping the pain from the heat would take away some of the other pains in her life.

  Just as she was about to pull on the handle and give up on the self-flagellation, a flash across the parking lot caught her eye. It looked like a car driving up and the sun reflecting off its glass, but as she counted the cars again—blue Civic, red Accord, silver minivan—there were no additions. Just the same three sleeping cars. Maybe she’d imagined it.

  But then another flash, this one while she was looking up. The back lot was shaped in an upside-down L that surrounded the building. All three cars and her own were parked with headlights facing the glass hall of the back corridor. With so much glass, it was hard to tell where the flash was coming from. Squinting, she examined the bushes at the long top of the L and then the transparent walls of the building. Nothing. Veronica shook her head. It was just the stress; it had to be.

  “Veronica!” A woman’s voice calling her name made Veronica jump and let go of the door handle. Over her shoulder, Gillian came tromping down the sidewalk leading from the offices. Her short, crisp hair stood frozen in the breeze, only shifting slightly like reeds surrounding the marsh by her house. “Veronica,” she huffed again, her pace slowing now that Veronica’s escape was not imminent.

  “Gillian.” Even Veronica could hear the annoyed edge to her voice, but Gillian never seemed to catch on. Turned out she wasn’t a lunch lady, but a cashier at the area’s only Walmart—nearly divorced and mourning her only son who died of cancer a few years earlier. That was the bit that got Veronica to take down the electric force field around her razor-wire-topped fence—Gillian’s son.

  To lose your only child when you were already alone—the thought made the aching in Veronica’s midsection grow. If she lost Sophie . . . every time the thought started to develop in her mind, she pushed it away. The idea of losing her without holding her again made Veronica want to hide in her house forever. Maybe that was why she was nice to Gillian—to prove to herself that she was different. It couldn’t happen in her family.

  “Hey! I got out from talking to Stacey a little later than usual, and you were gone.” Gillian stopped on the curb, her slightly shrunken purple T-shirt hung crooked over her enlarged belly. There was a small hole by the collar where an embroidered flower was pulling away from the seam and a faded pattern around the sleeve that made Veronica think it was supposed to be her dressy shirt.

  Gillian’s face was mottled, stark white in odd spots but bright red in others, sweat gathering around her hairline and dripping in large trails down the side of her face. Running from the back of the building to Veronica’s car had left her as out of breath as Veronica on a twenty-miler. Veronica clinched her fists and tried to focus on the sharp cut of her nails against her tender, burned palm.

  Stop being a bitch, she scolded herself firmly.

  “Sorry, my mom is out running errands with Sophie, so I thought I’d go home and clean while the house was empty.” She searched her mind for the right kind of thing to say next. If Gillian had her way, they’d sit and rehash their sessions every week and talk through all the most sensitive pain points. She’d come to see that Gillian worked through pain by vomiting it all out in words, but Veronica was stingy with her grief. It was like if she talked about it too much, it would go away, and then she’d lose Nick forever. That mixed with the embarrassment of losing control in front of someone like Gillian, who was in no way equipped to help her, made Veronica sure that she’d rather keep her tears to herself.

  “It’s okay. How was your session?” she asked and smiled at Veronica, a broad, needy smile. The woman reminded her of a large golden retriever all excited for a walk.

  “Short,” Veronica answered briefly, and then smiled back, tight-lipped.

  Gillian dropped her hands and smile at the same time, taking a hint for perhaps the first time in her life. “Oh, okay, well, you should get going. I’m sorry I bugged you. I know it’s busy being a working mom.” She chuckled and pointed at herself. “Been there, done that.”

  And there it was—the reason Veronica couldn’t ever look herself in the eye after being mean or cold to Gillian. They were almost nothing alike, from the sex of their only child to their age as mothers to the circumstances leading to their lonely lives, but it was still there—this cord of similitude that linked Veronica to Gillian and made her want to be kind. It took so little to make the lonely woman happy, like giving the golden retriever a dry bone from a box of treats.

  “I have a second or two. Did you want to tell me about your session?” It was difficult to make those words come out, but once she saw the excited shuffle of Gillian’s small feet, clad in the most reasonable walking shoes ever created by man, the dullness inside Veronica wavered for a moment.

  “Eh, not enough time for all of that. It was a rough one today.” The red in her face suddenly blanched white like she’d been hit by a giant gust of cooling wind. “It’s Christopher’s birthday. He would’ve been twenty-one today.”

  “Oh,” Veronica said simply. “I’m so sorry, Gillian.” Sometimes it was the only thing you could say.

  Gillian twisted her fingers together, but after blinking a few times, she looked up, eyes a little teary but with strength and resolve that Veronica was always jealous of.

  “Yeah, I knew you’d get it. But I’m trying not to sink down into the muck again. So hard to do, right?”

  Veronica nodded, jaw clenched to keep from saying too much.

  “Well, this Friday Stacey thought I should go out to a nice place and have a drink for Christopher, you know, because he’d be twenty-one.”

  Veronica hesitated. It was her turn to say something, but she thought Gillian wasn’t finished. The other woman’s lips twisted to one side, and the red splotches came back to her cheeks, a few showing up on her arms like a trail of stepping stones. It was getting late, and though the immediate panic had left, the posttherapy exhaustion was setting in, and all Veronica wanted was to find the magic words to get out of this conversation.

  “That sounds nice . . . ,” she finally responded.

  At the same time, Gillian blurted out, “Would you like to come?”

  The question hit Veronica in a hot wave, as though she’d opened the door to her superheated car. She hadn’t gone out since Sophie was born and definitely hadn’t had any alcohol. It was hard enough to get a steady milk supply while pumping exclusively; she didn’t want to have to waste a session to the infamous “pump and dump” re
quired after drinking.

  But now there was formula, and Sophie was older, and the look of need and loneliness in Gillian’s eyes was strangely touching, as if she were looking into the eyes of a woman she could become one day if bad luck or tragedy hit her world again.

  “Uh, let me talk to my mom but, um”—she bounced her head back and forth, considering how hard it would be to cancel later—“sure.”

  Gillian’s nearly-washed-away eyebrows shot up, sweat gathering in the wrinkles on her forehead. She started to bounce again, and Veronica couldn’t tell if her excitement was annoying or humbling. It made her feel something, and that in and of itself was strange.

  “Oh, you just made my day,” Gillian said, and leaned forward as though she wanted to give her a hug, but stopped when Veronica took a shuffled step backward, the idea of an odd woman touching her when she couldn’t touch her daughter striking an imbalance in her mind. Instead, Gillian held out her phone as if it were an offering. “Can I text you later?”

  “Um, sure.” Veronica flipped through her phone and got to the contacts page, and they exchanged. It was funny how her own phone felt like home but someone else’s felt foreign even if it was the same exact model. But Gillian’s was not. It was not only many years behind in technology, but also looked as if it had been dropped twenty times and possibly run over by a semi. The side of the screen was cracked, the back scratched with deep gashes, and the attempt at a screen protector was peeling at the corners. The phone was a lot like Gillian: it had been through hell, and you could tell just by looking at it. Veronica scolded herself again for being so damned shallow and then quickly typed in her name, first only, and phone number, knowing she’d regret it later.

  “Hey, your phone is ringing.” Gillian held it out and rolled her eyes toward the sky in a clear effort not to look at the caller ID.