Never Being Watched

Once again, Chaviva stared at the chair. It sat casually in the corner of the waiting room next to the admin’s window. Its unassuming pink cushion blushed coyly, surrounded by the mahogany-stained wood’s embrace.

That chair. That damn chair. That’s what started this suicidal swing. Chavi chewed her lip. No, maybe it wasn’t the chair. This fucking waiting room, colder than a psychiatrist’s analysis, where she was always alone – the fucking boredom had driven her to it. The magazines, with their wounded covers where thoughtless admins and PA’s had torn off the printed address boxes rather than take the time to neatly clip them with scissors, were merely the modern, socially acceptable alternative to ether for inducing the torpor that gave the providers the impression that tweezing the stubborn, old scar tissue of a wounded psyche was indeed painless for all parties concerned. No relief from the frosty silence could be found in them.

A sudden noise caused Chaviva’s thighs and buttocks to tense, ready to leap to her feet the instant the mahogany-stained door to the providers’ offices area opened. Her teeth squeaked at the sudden and forceful clench of her jaw. It was only some harried and exhausted admin sliding files into the stacks.

Come the fuck on already, Chaviva thought.

Her gaze strayed to the chair again. Fuck that chair. Fuck this room. All the wood was mahogany-stained for that elegant, upscale look. It was all just cheap pine underneath, though. The stain was laid on thick, attempting to cover up the furniture’s humble origins, but it was all mutton dressed for lamb. Sit in the chairs long enough and you’d see the natural grain peaking out near the joints. How upscale could the crap be when the finish couldn’t even be applied evenly? And Chavi had sat in these chairs enough to have spotted that issue long ago.

What visit number was this now? Was she supposed to keep count? Years of striving for perfect grades and perfect competition results landed her in consultation for depression around midterms, and what with her friend Agatha’s recent suicide, well, no one was going to let her stop anytime soon. That was the bitch about being a minor. It was all about some asshole, simply by virtue of having not died yet, getting to decide what was best for you. Did her psychiatrist believe Chavi’s anxiety over any flaw, perceived or actual, was really from some intrinsic bend toward self-injurious behavior? Kids don’t think they suck. Kids think their stick figure looks exactly like Mommy, until some fucker tells them otherwise. And she had years of being told she was just stupid with math, that she would never win a blue ribbon with that performance, that no one likes a girl who isn’t all sweetness and light.

Chaviva’s head snapped up at the click of a door handle, but she sank back into her chair when she realized it was another patient coming through the front door. Keeping her eyes down, watching through her periphery, she saw the newcomer go to the window to sign in, then sit down in the chair next to that chair. No one, not in any of the times Chavi had sat in this room, ever sat in that chair. That’s what had prompted the poem. The room would be full of people, to the point of people standing along the walls, but no one would sit in that chair.

It was supposed to just be a random, odd thought that spun into a poem. But it was deliberately crafted. It had a meaning and a meter that she chose specifically. What had prompted her to turn it in to the school literary magazine for publication? Chavi had gone twelve years through schooling without doing anything like this, knowing her work would be at the mercy of criticism and editing once it left her hands.

I see you but

you don’t see me

Forever I will be the one

always watching

never watched

Never watched, Chavi thought. That was how it was supposed to end. That was the meter she chose for the line. But the editors had changed it. It didn’t scan anymore. Never being watched. That’s what the editors published. It didn’t scan. It didn’t mean the same. They hadn’t even consulted with her to determine if the edit fit.

Oh, what was the point? Chavi took a deep breath of empty air. Empty of smells. Empty of reassurance. Her eyes were starting to burn and water. It was just a throwaway poem. Something she jotted down to cull the oppressive boredom of this waiting room. Christ’s sake, the clock didn’t even tick. It was one of those models with a sweeping second hand. Each second it swept forward, the ennui building before it like dust before the broom.

Yet, here she was again. Staring at that damn chair! The Prozac the psychiatrist gave her made her giddy, fearless, defiant. She submitted those poems (eight was it?) fueled by an antidepressant high, something the snide editor of the literary magazine told everyone was all bullshit – Prozac didn’t work that way. But the person with the actual fucking doctorate in the subject reassured Chaviva the mania was just due to her sensitivity to that drug class and adjusted the dose. The damage was done, though. Her classmates thought she was a liar, and she had submitted that fucking poem to the magazine buoyed by that high.

They had published two of Chavi’s poems. She couldn’t even tell you what the first one in the magazine was, only that it was one where she had challenged herself to write something in the style of E. E. Cummings. They hadn’t edited that one at all. Maybe they had. Had they added a slash or an asterisk somewhere? It didn’t really matter. It didn’t change the flow. Didn’t change the rhythm. Didn’t change the fucking meaning like changing the goddamn verb tense!

Jesus H. How fucking long was she supposed to wait past her appointment time. It felt like she had been there over a damn hour, but it had to be at least forty-five minutes. A quick look at the ceaselessly sweeping clock put it at thirty-five minutes past the hour. Thirty-five is close enough to forty-five, Chavi consoled herself. And it was far enough from her start time that, sure as finals and the SAT’s, were the roles reversed, her psychiatrist wouldn’t have waited for her. She wouldn’t even have gotten a phone call to say they were moving on to the next patient patiently waiting. But her parents would have certainly gotten the missed appointment bill next time.

Ok, thought Chaviva. No one can say I didn’t wait long enough. She knew she needed Help right now. But help could be more than a glut of janitorial clock with a capsule chaser. The smell of her mother’s bread lingering in the corners of her room. That was Help. The even color of her walnut-framed daybed, meticulously uniform even in the channels of the carvings. That was Help. The cheerfully faded gilt lettering on her classic hardbacks, the luster long ago loved off. That was Help. There was help in her home that pharmacotherapy feared. Help that didn’t require deductibles or co-pays or limitations on benefits.

Chavi stood up, reaching down to grab her backpack with the copy of the literary magazine she meant to show her doctor. She thought about leaving it on the magazine stack among the technology journals and outdoor sports magazines. Hell, they didn’t even have Highlights or Reader’s Digest, she realized. Chavi unzipped the big compartment of the pack to slide the journal inside, only to freeze in tight moment of premonition.

With a loud click, the mahogany door behind her flew open and slammed up against the bumper on the wall. A perfect caricature of a middle-aged man in crisis, complete with doughy body and greasy, receding hair barreled through the door into Chavi. She saw, and smelled, more of the man than she wanted. His hands were held wide and away to avoid touching her, and for some reason Chavi had an image of him fumbling with a bottle of Xanax, desperate for anything to quiet the anxiety until the day he could admit to himself, he liked blue furries and he could not lie.

“Chavi? Chavi, I’m sorry for the delay,” her therapist’s voice carried through the open door, the only part of him to make an appearance. “Come back.”

Chavi picked her backpack up again. She looked at the two doors for a moment. Then she closed one door and opened another.