THE WAITING ROOM | Shruti Koti
Sitting in the waiting room feels like a crime. The cartoon animals that dance across the pale pink wallpaper are somehow reminiscent of his grade school teacher’s warnings of the fires of hell. His collar feels uncomfortably small around his neck, and his stubble scratching against his chin makes him aware he neglected to shave this morning.
He looks around at the other women sitting in the room. He had driven his car more than 50 miles to get here, but he can’t be sure that one of them won’t recognize him. They are all here alone. At least he hasn’t abandoned her in this – at least she isn’t sitting here alone. He isn’t sure if he should feel reassured by this, or ashamed.
When he first found out, he didn’t know how to react. She had told him one morning before his shift started, over scrambled eggs and coffee. He sat there, watching her twiddle her thumbs, unable to eat any more of his food. He remembered noticing, in that moment, how young she was. The skin near her eyes had only barely begun to wrinkle, and the sun-kissed freckles that were scattered across her nose made him think of strawberries in summertime. For the first time, he saw the rest of her life unfolding in slow motion – finishing her community college classes, saving up enough money to go to a four-year college to study design, eventually “making it in the big city” the way they had joked about when they were younger. And if they made it, if they lasted that whole time, he would join her, and they would learn how to be a family together. Until now, none of this was ever in doubt. They had taken it for granted.
What will you do? By the time he asked, the waitress had cleared the table and the check sat in front of them.
She shook her head, not looking up at him. They sat without speaking until it was time for them both to go.
The next few weeks were plagued by indecision – hushed conversations in bedrooms, arguments in the alley behind the movie theater. He knew what she wanted, and he knew that in this one argument, he would never win. No matter what he believed, he could not decide this for her. In a different time, a few years ago, maybe that would have been the end of the argument – it would have been her decision, and no one else’s. Maybe she would have brought her mom, her sisters with her for support. Maybe she would have cried. Maybe he would have.
But now it is something else entirely. They are no longer fighting with just each other. This argument has ballooned up and swept them aside, and now he feels like a pawn in someone else’s twisted game.
My grandmother knows somebody, she told him one day, after he thought the stalemate could no longer go on. She can do it quickly, and quietly.
He was immediately furious. They had agreed, in the beginning, not to tell anyone. Whatever they decided, they would decide themselves. They were both adults. And, though he didn’t want to entertain the thought, if they decided to go through with it somehow, he didn’t want anyone else knowing, and being complicit. Or worse, spreading it around town like some common Sunday gossip.
I had to tell someone, she implored. We don’t know anything about this. We need any kind of help we can get.
He agreed, finally, to asking for help. But no herbal remedies. And nobody’s grandmother in a
dark basement room. You are too young and healthy to be killed by something so trivial.
He had used the wrong word. She nodded, not wanting to argue any more, but she said nothing more. She was wounded by that word, “trivial.” So was he. This was many things, but it was not trivial.
Now he sits remembering all this in the waiting room, wanting badly to hold her hand but too scared she will pull away. They are here together, but he knows the moment they leave, and go back to their own homes, they will never speak again. They are too damaged from what has happened.
Of all the things he could possibly go to jail for, he never imagined this could be it. He had stolen a box of cigarettes from the drug store in middle school, and made it out unscathed even though the store clerk noticed. He had been in bad neighborhoods on Saturday nights and somehow made it back home without a visit to the police station. But somehow, it is only now that he starts to wonder what his family would do without him. He looks at her; her skin looks so thin he thinks he can see the smallest of capillaries coursing across her face, purple and blue and red somehow making a human face look more alien. There is no emotion in her eyes.
* * *
She thought that afterwards she would feel free, unburdened from the thing that would have
sucked her back into the life she had only barely escaped. But it is the opposite. She massages her wrists as if to remind herself that there are no physical shackles there, then moves to feel her stomach, checking to see if it feels any different, but just as quickly pulls her hands away, worried that someone will see this loving gesture, and know what she has done.
He is waiting for her outside in the car. She doesn’t begrudge him this. She hadn’t expected him to come with her, but as he had pointed out, she didn’t have a car, and could not use a map if it sang to her. She tries to smile at him, but the muscles in her face feel raw and unused, refusing to contract that way. He hands her a coffee, and she gulps it down, the slightly oily aftertaste giving her something else to think about. It will be a long ride back home, and neither of them are prepared for the silence.
He pulls out of the parking lot and she closes her eyes, not wanting to look at him or the road. She leans against the window, and as she slowly drifts off to sleep, she thinks she hears the faint sound of sirens in the distance.
Shruti Koti is a surgical resident physician based in New York City. She earned her BA at the University of California, Berkeley, followed by her MD from Hofstra University. She is passionate about palliative care, narrative medicine, and storytelling. Discover her essays on Brief Op Notes.