The girl taking the next clipboard at the front desk also picks up a fish. Reaches into the tank, soaking the edge of her shirt sleeve, takes a slippery orange fish in her fist, and pulls it out into the open air. She squeezes its wet, struggling body and laughs in a way that is too loud and too exuberant, like a tour guide. But she is picking up the next clipboard at the triage section of the psychiatric clinic.
“You got some of these bright-colored fish again,” she says to the man behind the desk. A standing fan hums next to the open window. Canned laughter on the television attached to the corner of the ceiling. Streamers blowing out of the fan like desperate fingers.
“Love these things,” the girl says. “Definitely need one. Finals week, you know. Do you always have these out or is it a seasonal thing? Last time I was here they had them too but that was last year. I’m glad, anyway. They’re so cute.”
The girl takes the fish with her to sit in one of the old brown woven chairs in the waiting room.
“Are you asking if I’d be jealous of Maria?” a woman on the TV asks. “She’s four hundred pounds!”
The audience laughs.
The girl squeezes her fish quickly and several times, as if she’s pumping the life back into it. Her dark hair is frizzing in the heat. We are both sweating despite the fan.
In the corner of the room, an overweight man in a pastel-colored shirt is pacing back and forth, shooting glances in my direction. A thin woman with gray hair comes in and greets the boy leaning against the wall by the window wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Hi,” the woman says. “I’m Jerry.”
She descends into hushed tones as she escorts the boy down the hall. Fifteen minutes ago, I asked the man behind the counter for Jerry, but he told me that Jerry was busy and already had a client and he would find me a different doctor. She would be out soon. I just had to wait.
The lack of artificial light in the waiting room, the manual air conditioning, the coarse thread of the chairs, and the sweat and raw sunlight in the windows makes it feel like a clinic in another era.
The fish slips out of the girl’s hand and onto the carpet, lifeless. She picks it back up.
Kathryn Mayer lives, works, and writes in Baltimore, MD, where she also grew up. She is a graduate of University of Maryland, College Park, and the Jimenez-Porter Writers House. Her work has been published in New World Writing and Pif Magazine. kathryn-mayer.com.