Conditioned- A Story In Five Parts- Part Five

Day Three hundred and Nine

I walk into my office. A bald girl is sitting in the waiting room. She has no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair left on her head. She ate it all. I know because when she first started coming here she still had hair. I talked to her in the past, tried to make some progress. She screamed at me until she was horse and then kept screaming. I walk past her now, don’t even nod.

In my small, windowless office I throw my stuff down on the desk. I don’t turn on my computer, I don’t answer the phone. Someone walks into my office. It’s the bald girl, her large gut hanging over the belt of her stained trousers. She asks me to call her sister. Her sister’s dead. I know this because it’s the same delusion she’s had since the beginning. I tell her I can’t call her sister, say I’ll talk to her later.

She starts crying. I say “calm down” quietly, cause I know she won’t. The sobs become elongated, exaggerated, child-like. I don’t even hear them anymore. I say it again, “calm down, please- we can’t call your sister, you know that.” She starts screaming at me. “I want to call my sister!” I tell her we can’t, again.

She bangs her fist on my desk, screaming that she wants to call her sister. I stand up, grab my coat and my bag, walk past her. I leave my dim, windowless office. I leave the crowded waiting room where the drunk man is snoring, the teenaged mom is beating her child, the receptionist sits oblivious to it all.
I walk out my office.