The Waiting Room: Part III

The weight of her world, heavy with desperate hopes and desires to prove to herself what she is capable of, packed into that one, simple, two-letter word. In one utterance, it has become a foul, four-letter word that violates everything within her. Her axis has shifted and she sits on the chair in this little room. It is, if possible, more uncomfortable than the ones outside. Probably ones who come in here don’t stay long enough to notice. But she does, oh how she does.

Her pocket jangles with the last few pennies she has and she thinks about all the foolishly wasted ones she threw into this chance, tumbling on the wisp of a promise, as empty as her heart which, moments ago, had been brimming with wonderful, frightening possibilities. The echoes and rattles in it now seemed to find all the corners of this little room and reverberate back to her, head hung in hands, eyes stinging with hot tears she tries to hold back.

A wisp of cloth and a gentle presence, one she longs for but edges away from as he sits and she silently weeps her dreams into her trembling hands. He lets her cry for a while and she is surprised, expecting him to usher her out to make room for the next one, the one who will take chances she is again denied, who must surely be better equipped and smarter than she.

“Why are you so sad?” he softly probes at last and she thinks what an utterly foolish question he asks. He of anyone must know how long she has been waiting. Sometimes, she can remember nothing else.

“Don’t you already know?” she can’t help but snap, the tears tracing hot, glistening paths down her cheeks.

“Tell me,” he said, his patience more maddening than his denial. Who would play odds on this ever? She bemoans her fate silently but obliges, “I put everything into this, on this chance, onto you. They said you could send me, give me the things and the opportunities to go places.” She draws a shaky voice, scraped over the shreds of her last hopes, “I’m so tired of waiting. It’s all I’ve ever done. Sat out there in that damn room, waiting. Watching everyone else come here and then leave. I waved more people off who get to go where I want to and don’t. I don’t understand.” She thought about them, smiling as they left, asking her questions and making promises knowing she would never go with them. “Why can’t I go?” she demands, her voice breaking into as many pieces as her heart had minutes before, “Why do you always make me wait?”