An artificial plant rests plump and green in a sunlit corner. A living plant could certainly have thrived in this environment. I wonder why they chose this replica.

Across from me, a woman and her husband sit in silence, anxiety tethering them as their hands entwine. A quick glance at a mobile phone indicates this is still real life, and these are real people.

A woman and her daughter both flick through magazines, obviously not reading. Unconsciously, they finger the edges of the pages. They exude the illusion of calm, a deliberate nonchalance, but I know there's a symphony of panic that threatens to crescendo beneath the facade they seem so committed to maintaining.

I scan the room, trying my best not to be too obvious. Resisting eye contact to uphold the privacy we all hope to maintain inside these walls. In every corner of the room, a woman with her person. A partner, a child, a friend or lover.

I am alone. Solitude is my partner in this journey, and I am glad for the silence it affords me. I have nobody to ask the receptionist how much longer? Or to squeeze my hand uselessly as if to say I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

I retreat into my daydreams again, as I have done since this journey began. I imagine a vivid world, where I am myself, but different. I am unscarred, unmarked, and whole. The person I dreamed I would be when I was a small child. I flourish in this different world, different career, different lover, different achievements. My daydreams bring me comfort and respite from reality.

But I walk a fine line, never allowing myself to be lost to them. I am, after all, expected to remain... inspirational.

Collectively, we panic to avoid making eye contact with the couple who have returned from the hallway. The man pays the bill, as the woman wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper and stares vacantly towards the ceiling fan. I can tell she is doing that technique where

you push your tongue into the roof of your mouth to stop yourself from crying. I do it too. Not for myself, but for her. She looks younger than me. I know what's coming next for her. Her husband will try to minimise the information they have just received by pointing out how much worse it could be. She will silently stare at her hands as he fumbles through feigned pragmatism to arrange plans for meals, and childcare: that's if they are lucky enough to have a child already, because if not, this disease has taken that from her as well. He will interpret her silence as agreement, and he will be mistaken. He won't understand when she erupts screaming at him

about how he could never possibly know what she is going through, and that he has no right to downplay what's happening in her body. At least she'll have her daydreams.

Then it's my turn.

I'm always intrigued by how someone can smile so genuinely when they have spent their day delivering information like this. But today's smile is brighter than usual. His hands tap at the keyboard of his computer as he says a blur of words of which I only register a few. Successful, clear margins, nil disease detected, cured.

I shake his warm hand and thank him with genuine gratitude. I mutter something about wishing him the best and make my way to my car.

As my seatbelt clicks into place, I remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth and release a landslide of tears, not for myself, but for the women still waiting in that room.

 

 

© Laura Motherway. From Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs, published by Night Parrot Press.

 

 

 

Laura Motherway is a Western Australian author, poet and writer for children and adults. When she's not daydreaming up her next story, Laura is working in arts management, running children to cricket games or trying to stay sufficiently caffeinated to write just one more chapter.

 

www.nightparrotpress.com