“Let me repeat that: with the Humana drug plan…”
We found ourselves, the eight of us strangers, seated U-shaped in plastic waiting room chairs whose cushions were drenched in a distinct must, the kind that envelops its victim in nostalgia, then gnaws and swallows whole – a must that sweetly complements the rancid urine circulating in air. The powdery snowflake remnants of a generic white pill lay abandoned and crushed by its previous owner or the heel of a filing secretary, neither option a better fate for the forlorn symbol.
“…It’s the chance you’ve been waiting for to improve your health…” the Medicare spokesman reiterates with artificial glee. Was it my first or fifth time hearing this advertisement? In this ticking expanse of time it is difficult to determine whether we are ten minutes behind schedule or twenty minutes ahead.
My right-handed companion, a sallow-faced elderly woman sporting the same amount of wrinkles as hairs on her thinning scalp, fidgeted her stick fingers on her lap, then on her temples, then her forehead, then back to her lap, but not before plucking a crummy strand from her eyebrow. Twisting, turning, twisting, turning, I divert my attention back to the flickering fluorescent lights to keep from going mad in this psychiatric asylum we call paradise, but finding the on-off sequence nauseating, expanded my view to encompass the whole room.
Two spaces to the left a balding man dozed with legs spread eagle, arms crossed, bearded jawline nestled in a heavy-duty work jacket, one of his jean legs ripped to expose a crossed scar. Along the left wall a little brown-haired boy reached out to draw pasty circles on the beige floor squares from the pill’s crumby remains. His mother, or perhaps an apparition who resembled his mother – she looked so lifeless and pale herself, extra years traced under sullen eyes and bruised arms –, held his wrist, mumbled a few words and had him sat back down with the same inattentive side gaze. Shifting my gaze to right, I saw three more; a copper-skinned teenage girl in tight bottoms and a winter top busy adjusting her wig with the reflective backside of make-up case in one hand and ferociously chewing her cuticles in the other; another elderly person, this time a man, toothless and drooling in his sleep, cane resting by the rim of his chair and glasses hanging on his plaid chest; an amateur business man bent over with head in hands, his wrinkled top and holey socks juxtaposing the fresh suit thrown over. Here were we the eight, we the eight bearing the weight of the utter silence amidst the shuffling of papers and the occasional call the receptionist received. We the eight surrounding that crushed mess of a pill, never touching or glancing at it yet acknowledging its presence in this room, in our lives, in what we were anticipating.
“They sure are late, aren’t they?”
Something was interrupting the silence. Buzzing? Voices? Machines? I strained to listen.
“Miss?”
I felt a tap on my shoulder, or a nudge – my senses do deceive me more often than not – but nonetheless I cocked my throbbing head in to the sound’s source, out of a bearded, graying mouth resting on a double-chin.
“I…I suppose.”
Something is here, Something here to imprison, to worship. Imploring, deploring – what was it? This greedy Something? Its presence was almost solid enough to touch, yet too abstract to feel.
“Want to come with me and ask the receptionist?”
“I’m fine. I’ll keep waiting. I don’t think it would be of any use, anyway.”
Something was draping an invisible veil over my face, draining my eyes of their acuity. Was it the flickering overhead lights playing tricks to my perception or Something else? What was it?
A harsh clang, followed by a few more. The ceiling exploded into little fireworks and the noise amplified a bit more, but maybe it was the fire alarm. The Something wanted to be noticed, and it was doing a good job of being noticed by me. Could others see it? No, they are still doing what they have always been doing, oblivious to this Something plaguing me.
“Well, I guess they’re having some electrical outrage. How convenient – I’m here for anger-management issues and they pull this kind of act?”
“It’s no use, the general public just doesn’t understand us.”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
The darkness was beginning to consummate we the eight. The receptionist yelled out a phrase or so but the alarm was deafening, deafening to the point where we could not hear anything but the truth. After all, darkness has a funny way of bringing out the repression in others. We the eight, sitting like sheep, or standing, or even roaming, I could not tell, under this giant, fenced-in canopy.
“What just happened?”
“It’s so dark, I’m scared.”
“I rather like the darkness, it doesn’t judge us. It’s more beautiful than a harsh spotlight.”
“Why?”
Faster and faster, the sounds and conversations start to blur. A dark, shapeless blur. It was almost as if a searing flashlight was exposing the very crevices of our souls.
“I still have to take care of some business, hurry up!”
“Like I said, the people here just don’t understand. Well, they are still the general public, the folks who tell us to just get over what we can barely control.”
“Hush, child. Just do what I say.”
“I need help, but I don’t need your help.”
The sound was blinding. Click, click, click, click, I just continue on, waiting for the Something’s steps to stop.
“Where did my glasses go?”
“Have you seen my happiness? I rather miss it.”
“You might as well give up in this race, we’ll just wait and wait and wait some more.”
Something was in this room.
“What does everyone have here?”
“Chronic depression.”
“Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”
“I prefer not to say.”
“Why? You fool, no one but the dark is going to listen.”
The Something is coming. No, the Something has always been here. What a leech.
“The teachers always yell at me in school.”
“Bastards, just hide me in a closet and leave me to rot.”
“It’s not paranoia, it’s just being careful. Or so they say.”
“There’s nothing wrong except my own craze.”
“But honestly, it’s so ironic!”
“Why won’t they listen…”
Louder and louder my ears and eyes and head and mouth ring, yet I feel nothing.
“Either way, we are the trash of society. We are the unspoken taboos.”
“Sometimes I want to kill others, then myself – is that a disorder?”
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me!”
“So much for the Constitution. Wonderful America, land of the chained, home of the insane.”
“The other kids sometimes make fun of me for drawing my b’s like d’s.”
“Just hide us and the mental issues we represent, just cut away, cut away.”
“I really wish you were there when I needed you…”
The Something was breaking down the walls of this asylum, I could feel it, the tremors in the floor, the swaying. The others were intoxicated by the same Something I was. We were eight.
“I tell you, the whole situation is so funny, so hypocritical, sometimes I just want to–!”
Lights. Bright lights. That split second, the Something looked us, or rather me, straight in the eye.
Am I talking to shadows? One, two…six, seven. Seven shadows around me, and in them, people, people who look just like you and I, people who cry and smile and smile and cry, drowning people! Rather, not drowning, but submerged into this river of anguished screams and flailing arms. Forgotten, beaten, ignored – normal everyday people.
“So, your name is Something?”
An interrupted shuffling of heels from the south corridor.
“Viviana Lee, please come this way for your follow-up appointment with Dr. White.”
“How is the medication doing? Are you still hearing them?”
“Fine, fine.”
“Seeing them?”
“Fine, fine.”