The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  Not everyone made it—like it was an audition or something. Not everyone made it—from a bus full of children. She had leaned over and vomited into a wastebasket in the doctor’s office as she stumbled out, only half aware of the hopeful and somewhat jealous looks from a woman who must’ve thought Veronica was one of the lucky ones to have gotten pregnant.

  The drive to the hospital in Sanford had been a giant blur. She knew she should call her mother or the other parents on the block or the hospital, but she couldn’t do anything but drive as fast as she could. She got there before Nick, and she should’ve waited—she should’ve waited for him. But she didn’t. She wanted to see her baby, she wanted to see Sophie, so they took her back, past the rooms where worried parents held their frightened children, past the halls where moaning patients waited for medication, past all the hope that sloughed off behind her like scales from a snake.

  A pair of double doors had led her to a room where doctors said something about identifying the children inside. She couldn’t really hear; there was an infernal ringing in her ears and a voice in her head that told her if she didn’t look, it wouldn’t be real. She should’ve waited for Nick. But she didn’t.

  Inside a large, bare room, there had been six tables covered in sheets. Six small forms with just their tiny feet sticking out. Six lives stopped too soon, far, far too soon. One pair of shoes had laces untied, pooled on the stainless-steel tabletop. Veronica wanted to tie them for him, make him ready for his day at school. Start over two hours earlier and stop all these shoes from walking onto that bus. But she only thought about the loose laces for a moment because then she saw them, the shoes that took the tragedy from being a general loss of beautiful potential to the loss of her everything—her world. They sparkled even in that terrible cave of a place—Sophie’s favorite pink boots.

  Veronica’s feet had frozen in place, and without saying a word, she had turned back and run, shoving the doctor out of the way with both hands. He called something after her, but she didn’t listen—she bolted through the swinging double doors and ran past all the lucky parents who were still parents, then out the front door into the cold fall air as far away from the shine of those boots as possible. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even vomit anymore; her stomach was too empty. She wanted to cry, but if she cried, it would be real.

  She should’ve waited for Nick.

  “I don’t want to remember,” Veronica shouted, clearing the papers off the table with one broad sweep of her arm and then clearing off all her supplies with another massive stroke. Standing, she turned to Nick and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Please stop. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember . . .”

  Mark stood silent in the background, staring at his feet like he was trying not to intrude on the private moment.

  “I know.” Nick pulled her into his arms, and there must’ve been learned muscle memory, because her body relaxed against him. He held her tighter, like he’d forgotten who she was and was suddenly remembering.

  “Listen, Ronnie, you don’t have to let it all back in right now,” Nick said, pulling away slightly so he could get a look at her face. He put his hands around her cheeks and smoothed her hair like he used to do with Sophie. “That’s what Green Oaks is for. They can help you remember slowly, safely. They can help you do this right.”

  “No,” she interjected, not willing to leave Nick’s arms but also not willing to give in to his plan. “I can’t do it, Nick. It hurts too much. I can’t. I can’t remember it all. Plus, I’ve got to take care of my baby.”

  “Oh, Veronica.” Nick sighed like she’d disappointed him in a way he’d never known was possible, backing up and leaving a cold spot where his chest had pressed against her. “You’ve got to stop with this baby thing. You’ve got to stop. It’s one thing living in this fantasy world on your own, but you’ve got your mom doing it too. You need help.”

  “What the hell? My mom was here when you weren’t. My mom was here to help me when I couldn’t hold my . . .” The words stopped, and more memories started to flood back in. They were painful, like they were being injected into her brain with a hypodermic needle. Her mom finding her half-dead in her bed, empty pill bottle in her hand. Buying the new house in Sanford. Painting the nursery. Getting all the supplies. Feeling hope again. “Stop it, Nick!” This time it was more like a scream. “I told you I don’t want to remember!”

  “You can’t live like this anymore, Ronnie. You are a danger to yourself, and you are running your mom ragged, and you are lying to everyone you know whether you realize it or not, your mom and your therapist and even Mark here.”

  “I’m not lying,” she growled, backing up until she bumped into the desk. She looked back at Mark, who was now pacing by the door like he didn’t know if he should help Nick or help Veronica. “Mark, I never lied to you. I didn’t know any of this . . . really . . . I’m not a liar . . . I’m not . . .”

  “This is so messed up,” Mark said, half to Veronica, half to himself, looking both sympathetic and devastated at the same time.

  “You saw my baby. You saw her—you know she’s real, Mark. I don’t know what Nick is playing at, but my baby is real.”

  “That little girl you stole at gunpoint? That is my baby, Ronnie,” Nick said with a possessive edge to his voice and hard lines on his usually peaceful face. “My baby with Daisy. She’s my wife. Chloe is my baby.”

  It all came flooding back, and this time she couldn’t stop it. It washed over her like the pounding waves of the ocean, knocking her off her feet, waiting till she got her footing again and then slamming her down one more time. All those gauzy memories of building a life for Sophie came into focus. The empty crib. The empty bottles. The crying her mother never seemed to hear. Laundry that was never dirty. Diapers that didn’t smell. A baby she couldn’t touch . . . because she was only a memory.

  “Your baby wasn’t kidnapped today—my baby was kidnapped today. I didn’t die—you died, or at least the woman you used to be died and was buried along with our daughter two and a half years ago. You are the criminal. You, Ronnie Crawford—or should I call you Veronica Shelton?”

  Veronica crumpled to the floor, hands over her ears, knees up against her forehead, mumbling repeatedly. “I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to listen.”

  Nick fell to the floor in front of her on his knees and ripped her hands off her ears. She writhed under his grip, cowering, feeling powerless. Mark shouted out from behind them.

  “Hey, hey, that’s a bit rough. Knock it off.”

  But Nick didn’t flinch. His eyes, Sophie’s blue eyes with tiny pinpricks for pupils, bored into her.

  “You are going to listen.” He was angry now. It was an emotion she wasn’t used to seeing on the normally levelheaded man. “I lost my daughter on that bus too. And then you blamed me for putting her on that morning instead of driving her, and so I lost you to grief and anger. But I’ve found some measure of happiness with Daisy and Chloe, and I’m not going to let you mess that up for me. Daisy wants to call the police, and I honestly can’t blame her. At first it was just stealing pictures of Chloe from Facebook, but, Ronnie, you stole her baby today.”

  Veronica whimpered, trying not to listen, Nick’s fingernails starting to cut into the flesh around her wrists. “You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m serious, man, let her go.” Mark was only inches away. “Now.”

  Nick, his breathing heavy and sweat beading up at his hairline, released her slowly, his fingers leaving white, then red marks on her skin. Veronica scrambled away, confused and frightened and totally lost as to what reality was and whom to trust. With the two men making a triangle with her at the apex, she felt cornered. Nick continued, calmer now, maybe a little ashamed at hurting her.

  “Listen, you can find it again too, happiness, that is. You just need help.” He stepped toward her, but when she flinched and Mark made a move in his direction letting them all know he wasn’
t going to allow another finger on Veronica, he returned to his spot behind the desk. “I don’t want you to go to jail, Ronnie,” he said, almost sweetly. “I still love you.”

  “I love you too, but it’s too late for us,” Veronica replied, surprised that she didn’t just say the words but also meant them. She loved the memory of Nick, the imaginary man she’d been mourning, not this near stranger in front of her who had a daughter with another woman.

  “Oh no, that’s not what I meant.” He choked on the words and then rushed to clarify. “I will always love you just like I will always love Sophie, but I’ve moved on. I can love Chloe and Daisy and still want what is best for you. That’s why I hired Mark’s boss. Your mom refused to do anything but enable you. You always said that enabling was her superpower, and look what a stellar job she’s done around here.” His sarcasm hurt Veronica, and she flinched away. Nick paused and forced himself to speak in an overly compassionate tone. “You need help, Ronnie, but if you don’t take it this time, if you don’t take it right this second, I will let Daisy call the police and we will have you involuntarily committed. We have plenty of evidence to your mental state; that’s why I got the PIs. I tried not to tell them everything, I tried to protect you, but it’s not easy to get someone committed, believe it or not. But even without knowing how far off the deep end you’ve gone, it clearly wasn’t a surprise, even to strangers. Why do you think Mark here has been so quiet?”

  He pointed at Mark, who gave Veronica an apologetic grimace. “When I told him just now, it didn’t take much convincing that you have lost your ever-loving mind. The police figured out they were looking for a nonexistent baby fast too, and once your mom came home from urgent care, they called off the investigation. Take my offer, please. You can find life again. Real life, Ronnie.”

  “I don’t know what is real anymore,” she said, her body collapsing in on itself, knees pulling up to her chest and head hanging low. “I don’t know.”

  Real—the word held little meaning for her. Baby Sophie had seemed so real, and Nick being dead felt real, and the search for kidnapped Sophie felt real, and her mother disappearing felt real, and holding little Chloe like she had her baby felt real and . . . How could it all be nothing more than her mind trying to protect her from a horrible truth? In the downward spiral of Veronica’s despairing thoughts, she became aware of a voice calling her back.

  “Hey,” Mark greeted softly as he settled next to her on the floor. “Crazy day, huh?” He said it like they’d left a wallet in the back seat of a cab and had to find it before their plane took off. “If I’m confused, I know you’re confused, right?”

  “Understatement of the year,” she said, the grief she’d been running from nibbling at her consciousness. She couldn’t let it in; it was a ravaging creature. She rocked back and forth, her head hitting against the wall behind her, lightly at first and then a little harder with each tap once she noticed the pain of each crack took away the pain of remembering. Nick had backed off and was texting but also seemed to be watching Mark’s interaction with Veronica. Mark’s shoulder pressed lightly against hers.

  “I think you need to go to this place, this Green Oaks.”

  Veronica bristled and shifted away from him, resuming her injurious self-soothing. “I’ll be fine now. I can see Lisa. I’ll be fine.” Tap, tap, tap, tap. Each thump made another memory go away, another remembered pain dissolve into a physical one.

  Mark shook his head and put his hand over hers where it rested on the floor. “No, I don’t think you will. This”—he gestured to the room and the pictures on the floor, the rocking, and Nick—“is too much for Lisa, and, Veronica, be honest with yourself, this is too much for you too.”

  She didn’t want to go. Tap. Her home was her safe place. Tap. She could make the rules here. Tap. She could hide from the demons. Tap. She could let in who she wanted and shut out all the rest. Tap. And Lisa, she didn’t need to know everything. Tap. She liked “postpartum” Veronica. Tap. The Veronica she’d been living as could give her just enough information to work through some of the grief and learn how to get back out in the world. She could start over as her again. Tap. Maybe she’d take medicine this time. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  It took a lot of energy to form any words, but when she did, they were low and firm. “You don’t know me.” She slid her hand out from under his and crossed her arms on her chest, hitting her head hard enough to make the paper-covered window rattle. “You don’t know what I can or can’t do. And you don’t know Lisa, despite all your stalking and snooping. What the hell were you doing at that office anyway? Did you even go to the support group?”

  She leaned forward to let her head crash backward again when Mark put his arm against the wall, taking the brunt of her impact. Mark flinched, and Nick butted in, pointing at his phone. “Ronnie, I don’t care who you think knows you or doesn’t know you—it’s time. You come now or Daisy is calling. She’s frantic. I can’t hold her back anymore.”

  “You’ve got to go with him,” Mark said with finality, not losing an ounce of intensity. He turned on his side and tried to draw all Veronica’s attention to him, keeping his hand firmly in place behind her skull. “This is not a game. This is not about you going to jail or staying out of jail. This is also about Gillian.”

  “What about her?” Gillian. Veronica froze. She’d nearly forgotten about Gillian, which made sense, sadly, because most of the world had forgotten about her as well. What was it like to be so forgettable? Veronica never wanted to know.

  “You got her involved in this mess. She’s an accessory to kidnapping. She drove the car. She helped you plan the abduction . . .”

  “She provided the gun,” Veronica added, catching on to his reasoning.

  “Oh my God, you had a gun?” He shook his head and continued as though he wanted to forget he’d heard that information. “You might have other options like treatment because of everything you’ve been through, but she will not. You can’t let them call the police, Veronica. It will not only ruin your life, but it will ruin Gillian’s.”

  It was all coming together, all the horrible truths of her life that she’d tried to keep behind her mental walls. She’d built a house of safety here. Within these walls, she could still be a mother, a cherished wife to a tragically lost husband. She could be a good daughter and re-create herself as the name she used on her artwork and picture books. When Nick’s baby was born, she didn’t want it to be true, didn’t want him to have moved on so fully. He could move on from her but not from Sophie. How could he forget about Sophie? How could he have a child with another woman when he didn’t want to make another child with her? Even thinking through the imagined life of Nick and Daisy and their perfect baby, Chloe, made her want to go back to the fake life she’d slipped into after Nick’s baby’s birth.

  But in this house for the past eight months since Sophie . . . or Chloe had been born, she wasn’t Ronnie Crawford, stay-at-home mom and flighty artist whose daughter was killed in the tragedy on Route 42, whose husband was gone because she was crazy, who had to live alone in the house that was a graveyard of memories. She was Veronica Shelton, successful illustrator, mother, widow, cherished daughter, working her damnedest to do what was right for her family.

  It wasn’t hard to pretend. Moving helped. Then Ronnie invited the ghosts in and asked them to stay for dinner, and now she had a full-blown delusion for a life and she was hurting more people she cared about. If there was one thing she seemed to excel at, it was hurting people.

  Veronica let her legs stretch out into the scattered papers that now covered the floor and crinkled as she shifted on top of them. Her gaze fixed on one of the drawings of Sophie that lay by her hand. She was dancing. How she missed seeing her daughter dance.

  “She would’ve been a beautiful figure skater,” she said to herself, her voice echoing in the nothingness she was trying to force her mind to accept. She hadn’t talked about Sophie in a long, long time. In fact, it was hard to remember very much
of life before she’d built her fantasy world.

  “Yeah, I know,” Nick responded, letting his head bounce in agreement and once again holding back tears.

  “No,” she growled. She grasped the picture by her side until it crumbled into a ball. She fumbled to her feet, hand clenched tightly around the memory of their daughter. “You don’t get to cry anymore. You moved on. You have Daisy and Chloe and a fairy tale life. You don’t get to have the same tears as me.”

  “Damn you, Ronnie,” Nick said with complete disdain, eyes wrinkled at the corners like they did when he forgot his glasses or was mad at some politician on the nightly news. “You aren’t the only one who lost your daughter, remember? And then you blamed me for putting her on that bus. You kicked me out of the house. You divorced me, remember?”

  “Liar. I loved you. I never would’ve—”

  “You called me a murderer. Called me selfish. Called me every name in the book. And now I can’t cry? Damn you!” He was shouting now. Nick never used to shout. Veronica’s muscles twitched with each word, not sure if they were true but questioning herself more and more. “You deserve this hell you’ve built for yourself. Let’s go.”

  He slipped his phone in his pocket and pointed to the door, two and a half years’ worth of exhaustion showing in every movement. But Veronica didn’t move. She wasn’t ready to go and face it all just yet. Like she was shuffling through low tide at the seashore, she waded through the discarded memories that surrounded her until she stood in front of the statue of a man that used to be her husband.

  He had a new ring on his left hand, one she didn’t buy for him. His glasses were slightly different, the frames brown instead of black and some metal showing on the arms. His body was different too, thicker in places he’d been trim before, the short beard hiding some fullness to his face. And those tears that she’d banished moments earlier still stood perched on his eyelashes like they were waiting for her to look away before they could fall without reproach.