The Waiting Room

by Bill Bruce

There are no wisps of music, no hum of machines, no whir of air conditioning, no bleat of phone, no tick, tick, tick of clock. Whatever sucked the life out of this biscuit-colored room took every oscillation along with it.

The hinges rotate, the metal door sighs and closes on its own. No one is behind the desk behind the sliding glass. Nothing is as it should be. Just as it should be, Molly thinks.

She waits until Dan chooses a seat then takes the one opposite. Neither picks up a magazine from the sprawl on the glass coffee table pressing against their shins.

A woman in her mid-forties comes from the back and sits two seats from Molly. She has a few tissues wadded in her fist she uses to quietly wipe her red-rimmed eyes.

Dan doesn’t take his eyes off Molly. Molly doesn’t take her eyes off the painting of a lake in the woods. Dan watches Molly disappear into the trees. He is helpless to stop her.

Finally, Molly looks at Dan with a sense of inevitability. Her eyebrows arch, her mouth flattens, her head bobs up and down slowly like a buoy caught in a wake in that lake in the woods.

Dan asks what she’s thinking. Molly’s head tips slightly to one side as if she can’t sustain the weight of Dan’s incognizance.

Molly looks at her chewed fingernails, searching for a point of attack. But there is nothing left to avenge so she clasps her hands together as if in prayer. But there is nothing left to gnaw on there either. She looks across at Dan and decides he’ll do.

“We had an inground pool in the backyard where I grew up. Every spring, two ducks would come to mate. Just like Tony Soprano,” Molly says, smiling at the thought. She waits. Dan doesn’t get the reference. “Anyway, this happened every year. Same exact thing. They show up. They screw. They rest. They swim. They screw. It goes on like that for a few weeks or so. And then, they disappear. No more ducks until another pair show up the next spring. Then one year, something more dramatic happens.

“Two ducks show up and they do their thing for a couple of days. But then on day three, I see a different male swimming with her. He’s bigger, more colorful. And just as I begin to wonder what could have happened, I see the first male duck sitting in the grass, alone, watching. He’s just sitting there while she and this other duck screw and rest and swim and then screw some more.

“Soon, my whole family is watching this soap opera unfold from the kitchen window.

“At the end of the day, the two ducks flew off, followed shortly by the third. We went out to the pool. See, they never spent the night. They would leave at sunset and come back at sunrise and get right back at it. Anyway, my dad finds a duck egg in the grass. We never saw any eggs in previous years. Her nest, we figured, must be elsewhere. We’re just the motel, so to speak. Anyway, I reached for it, but my dad said not to touch it. She might come back, he said. My mom and I shared a look. We knew she wasn’t coming back. Not for that egg anyway. She had moved on. That egg was no accident. Well, not anymore. She apparently found something in the other duck that the first one lacked. I’m no ornithologist, but I’m guessing size and color, for one and two. And who knows, maybe they just didn’t share any duck chemistry.

“Still, my dad let his emotions take over. He spent the night on Amazon trying to find an incubator. But, in the end, natural selection won ‘cause an incubator was crazy expensive.

“So for the next few days all three ducks would show up. One sitting in the grass, confused and unwilling to accept things, and two in the pool getting on with life.

“On the last day we saw them, only the two showed up. The female and the new duck. I hoped the first duck found himself a nice female and was happy screwing and swimming and resting in another pool somewhere close by.”

Molly unfolds her hands, arches her eyebrows, flattens her mouth. Her head bobs up and down slowly. “I still do.”

Dan looks at the lake in the woods and then back at Molly. “Why are you telling me this story?”

“Break the silence.”

“I’m confused.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know what to say.”

“We agreed,” she says.

“You said what you wanted and I said, okay.”

“Like I said, we agreed.”

Dan’s mouth opens, as if to say something.

A nurse wearing blue scrubs and tired eyes comes from the back holding a chart. “Miss Jenkins,” she says without emotion.

Dan looks from the nurse to Molly. “Do I come with you?”

The nurse and Molly share a look. “No,” Molly says quietly. She walks halfway to the nurse and looks back at Dan. “But thank you for bringing me.”

“Okay. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Molly’s eyebrows stitch together. “About that. I’m good for a ride after.”

Dan shifts his weight in the seat. “Oh. So...”

“Miss Jenkins,” the nurse repeats.

Molly takes a quick breath through her mouth, holds it, and then exhales, “I have to go.”

Dan’s confused look drifts around the room and lands on the woman with the fistful of tissues and the red-rimmed eyes.

“The other duck is picking her up,” she says.

Molly follows the nurse into the back.

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Bill Bruce began his writing career in advertising, departing to focus on longer-format writing and directing. Together with his wife, Tracy, they formed a multi-media entertainment and marketing partnership. He has since created and directed work in various mediums while also publishing short stories in Lunate, Mud Season Review, Oyster River Pages, amongst others. Bill just completed his first novel.

Bill can be reached at billbruce.beg@gmail.com.