In the Waiting Room

When you see the guy who beat the shit out of you for the first time after it happened, what do you do? Do you dial 911? Do you march up to him and smash him across the face? Payback for what he’s done to you? 

Do you turn back into the traumatized mess you were the day it happened? 

Or do you stare at your magazine in an oncologist’s waiting room, and pretend you’re not acutely aware of his presence? Do you cover your face with the magazine so he won’t see you, and hope against all hope that he won’t still recognize you or your family?

My sister, Olivia, nudges me in the shoulder, “Hey, isn’t that kid on your cross country team?” He’s sitting in the corner with his dad, speaking in hushed tones, kind of like we are. There’s a decent amount of people in this room right now, and I suddenly want to disappear. 

I told myself I wouldn’t be scared of him. I told myself I wouldn’t take his crap again. I told myself that him and his opinions of me don’t matter. But now that he’s sitting here? All I can think is please don’t notice me. 

I still have the magazine blocking most of my face, but still I look away, studying the other people in the waiting room. A mother sits on a beige leather couch with her toddler in her lap. I don’t let myself wonder which one of them is here as the patient. Some questions are better left unanswered. 

Near them, a whole family - a mother, father, and three kids, sit waiting. The dad is watching the news on TV, the oldest kid, who is probably about my age, is doing homework, and the younger two kids are bickering. Again, I don’t let myself think about the reasons behind them sitting in this room. I’ve been in rooms like this enough times to know that you don’t always want to know everything. 

A middle-aged white guy in a suit taps away intently at his phone. And beside them, a young couple about my sister’s age, sit together holding hands. The man is bald and wearing a mask, so I don’t have to guess why they’re here or wonder (or try not to). The woman is wearing an engagement ring and I can’t help but hope they get to have that day together, and a bunch of days after that. 

A bald elderly African American woman leans into her husband exhausted. You can tell that they’re trying to beat her cancer with love alone. I wonder if that’s something my family can do too. 

And over in the far corner is Harry Jacobson, who to the people around him looks like a kind, striking high school senior destined for great things. The last person you’d want to see sitting in a waiting room like this one. 

Isn’t that what they basically said on every GoFundMe page for this kid? Every flyer and article said he was this great cross country runner who just wanted to get back to a normal life. 

Maybe part of the reason I’ve only told one person what he did to me is because I don’t want to be the person to undo that image. I don’t want to be the person who ruins the miracle boy of Jefferson High School. I don’t want the world to believe that someone can survive something like he did, and come out of the other side a bully. He’s graduating in six months, and this town will either remember the brave teen who survived brain cancer or the bully who beat a scrawny kid two years his junior to a pulp. 

And yet, part of me fears that if I don’t speak up, no one will remember me at all. 

The nurse calls his name, greets him warmly, and I see the charisma everyone tells me he used to have. A smile and a joke to her, and how kind she is towards him as she greets him. I wonder if that’s just how they treat you when you’re in remission and they only see you once every six months or if he’s just one of her favorite patients. My girlfriend went to camp with him years ago, and told me he was diagnosed in 8th grade, when he was thirteen, so he’s likely been coming to this office for years. 

After he and his father are ushered to the back, I lower the magazine, certain that I’m safe now. 

I look back at Olivia and nod, but I don’t add anything more. 

She hesitates, “Do you know, is he here for his dad, or?” She won’t look me in the eye. 

I shrug, “He’s here for himself, but he’s been in remission for a while now.” 

“I assume you’re not friends.” She says. 

I shake my head slowly. “We kind of got off on the wrong foot.” And this isn’t the place to get on the right one again, I think, but I keep that to myself. 

And the truth is, what I’ve said to Olivia? About getting off on the wrong foot? It’s a huge understatement. A month ago, I promised her and her husband, Miles, that I wouldn’t keep secrets anymore. And all it took was Harry Jacobson to march into my life with his fists and I’m lying again. I’m hiding pieces of myself, bruises, frustration, anger, you name it. I’m hiding how it hurts to breathe because he might have cracked a rib. And I’m hiding how helpless I feel all over again. 

And at the same time, I’m still not even sure why I bother keeping his secrets. Sure I don’t want to ruin his golden boy survivor image, but it’s not like I’d be saying anything that’s not true. Plus, my sister is a lawyer, and would go to the school, guns blazing, if she knew. 

She wouldn’t even hesitate to make a scene in this waiting room right now, tossing out all kinds of legal jargon at him and his father, demanding restitution for what he did to me. I’ve tried to tell her at least twice, but I haven’t been able to get the words out. 

And I still can’t figure out what it is that’s stopping me. 

Is it shame that he was able to hurt me? 

Is it anger at myself for not fighting back? 

Is it because even though my best friend swears that Harry Jacobson went too far and that he’ll never speak to him again, I know for a fact that even though they’ve ended things, they’re still very clearly in love with each other? 

Or does it run deeper than that? 

Is it that I know firsthand the repercussions of spending time in this waiting room? Is it that I know how it tears you down - the waiting, the wondering, the uncertainty as poignant as the actual pain that this experience entails? 

I look down at the magazine in my lap. “You okay, bud?” My sister asks. Olivia would never agree, but she saved my life. She and her husband have had my back since my twin brother and I ran away from home four months ago and landed in Juvie for that, among other things. My sentence was brief, but they got him on assault as well as truancy. He’ll be home soon, and until then, I’ll just be here, waiting. 

“Yeah”, I lie, “Just can’t wait to get home. I have a lot of homework to do.” 

I spent more of my childhood than I would have liked in waiting rooms not so different this one - fish tanks fixed in position to make an otherwise sterile, sad environment feel a little more normal. And as a kid, those fish tanks drew me in, as my brother and I waited for our physical therapy appointments after we both got hurt in a car accident. Back then, my brother and I tried to embrace each appointment as a new adventure. In between appointments, he’d study picture books full of more fish than I even believed could possibly exist. And I would just watch mesmerized as he stood next to the tank, announcing each and every fish type. 

But I never felt so safe as I do with Olivia by my side. Like a Mama Bear protecting her cub. Even when I lie to her, I feel safe. Like she will carry me through every obstacle that heads my way. 

It’s strange to be in a room like this one, to see the list of the doctor’s names on this wall, and feel safe in any way possible. 

She puts a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.” 

I wonder if I should thank Harry. We’ve been sitting in this room for twenty minutes by now, and instead of being weighed down by thoughts of the appointment that lies ahead of us, I’m obsessing over the past. I wonder if that’s why he did it. If even though he’s been cancer free for a few years now, it still weighs on him like a yoke. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning, like I’m training for the Navy SEALs, and the instructors are yanking me down into the pool, and I’m doing all I can to hold my head above water. 

The nurse comes back and calls another patient in. It’s the elderly old woman this time. Her husband stays protectively at her side, her face a portrait of exhaustion and his stride hopeful, like they’re almost at the end of this thing. 

I study Olivia, who is on her laptop looking over her notes for an upcoming court date, and looking at the look on her face, I don’t wish the roles were reversed, though sometimes I think she does. She’s determined, but she’s also scared. She’s scared for me. She’s scared about how I’m going to react if this appointment doesn’t end the way I need it to. She’s scared about how the outcome we don't want could change all our lives. I don’t blame her. I’m terrified. Around her, I’m not ashamed to be afraid. 

I run my right hand gently over my left arm. This is it. The appointment that determines if I get to keep it. Where they look at the latest scans and determine if they can replace it with a bone graft or a metal implant or if it has to go. 

Next week, my brother will come back from juvenile detention, and the first thing we’ll do together as a family is go to the hospital to remove the tumor from my arm. I just don’t know whether the tumor will take my whole arm, my ability to play guitar, and my ability to pretend to be a normal fifteen-year-old with it, or if a year from now, I’ll be like Harry Jacobson - sitting in this waiting room waiting to find out if it’s time to go through this whole nightmare all over again. 

Sometimes I think it would be easier if I could stay frozen in this moment of wondering. At least then I wouldn’t need to face the consequences of the outcome. The other part of me just wants to get this over with. Wants to be brave and say that if the cancer is going to take a piece of me, then so be it, as long as it doesn’t take all of me. But I’m a coward and I’m praying to a God I don’t particularly believe in to spare me that loss. 

Lately, my life has been so chock full of secrets. So full of hiding pieces of myself, not only from my sister, but from people at school, even the teachers, the guys on the cross country team, guys like Harry Jacobson, etc. Even my brother, who’s sitting in a cell in Juvenile Detention right now, has no idea what I’m dealing with today. I didn’t see the point of burdening him with the news of my diagnosis, when there’s nothing he can do from behind bars. 

“I wonder what’s taking so long”, Olivia complains, starting to stand and ask the front desk what’s taking so long, but I put a hand on her forearm to calm her down, “It’s okay. I’m not in a rush.” 

“Okay”, she says, sitting back down. 

The door to the back opens, and Harry and his dad come back into the waiting room. Moments later, the nurse calls my name and I stand. But, I’m a deer in headlights, my biggest secret being revealed in the simple coincidence of us both being patients at the same practice. Olivia senses my conflict and puts an arm around my shoulder and protectively walks me towards the waiting nurse. Harry stands with his dad at the checkout counter, no doubt scheduling his next sojourn into this world he doesn’t quite belong in anymore. 

But as I pass him, we lock eyes, and on his face, I can see all the things he cannot say, in the same way he must see them in mine. At school, while running, we can disguise our pain in the exertion, in the miles of distance covered, in the impact of the pavement as it strikes our heels, in the late nights up studying for exams, but here in this waiting room, our pain is identified in the reasons we both have for being in this room, in the fear we both share for a common enemy in a world where we were both certain we had nothing in common. A fear that goes so far beyond the questions the doctors will ask me when they see the bruises he put there. 

I hear the receptionist set an appointment date for four weeks from now, and the dejection in his father’s voice as he thanks her, and I look at him inquisitively. He stares back at me, and I walk away, knowing he’ll never dare to tell anyone he saw me here, and even though I’m glad that my secret is safe, I can’t help but hate the reason why. 

My sister nudges me through the door, and I walk away from the waiting room. It’s time to figure out my future. There’s no need to wait anymore.