A Splash of Color

The waiting room was a taunting room, to say the very least. White walls, small beige chairs, old, crumpled magazines. Everything smelled of disinfectant. People, pale faced and solemn, sat in the chairs around me, pretending to read while they shook, afraid. The room’s air was thick with anticipation and sleep.
I was flipping idly through an old copy of Highlights when I heard Dr. Mullnen call my name. I set the magazine down and took a deep breath as I stood up. Around me, a few of the other waiting looked up; keeping their face expressionless, as though I was a person they were seeing on the bus, not a patient at a mental clinic. A step up from a psychiatrists’ and a step down from an asylum, Lily Glenn Clinical rehabilitation psychiatric center, or, as I referred to it, Kreepy Kindergarten was a place I had never enjoyed. Yes, that’s Kreepy with a K.
Dr. Mullnen was a woman in her late thirties, tall and optimistic beyond belief. Since that morning three years ago, she’d gotten to know me quite well. I, on the other hand, barely knew her first name. It was either Violet or Charlotte, I still wasn’t sure. She had short red hair that she died a dark brown color, dark eyes and thin lips. She folded her thing arms as I sat down in the chair across from her.
“So, Alice, how was school this week?” She asked, using a condescending voice much like the one you would use when addressing a small child. I blinked a few times and willed myself to draw up some detail to tell her, anything to get off the subject. A simple ‘Oh it was good’ never satisfies her, not like it does my mom. I mumbled in response,
“We started reading Macbeth in Language arts.”
Oh damn it, as soon as the words left my mouth I knew it had been a mistake, Dr. Mullnen had made it her purpose in life to keep me away from anything moderately depressing. I knew now there was no chance I would get to finish Macbeth, a story I was starting to enjoy.
But, instead of shooting me down, she simply nodded distantly, pushing her spectacles down her face.
“Now, Alice dear, I have a proposition for you, if you feel willing to accept,” She told me, looking at me with expectant eyes.
This wasn’t the first of her ‘propositions’ for me. Ever since I was diagnosed with Depression and avoidant disorder after Kurt’s... ‘Death’, she had tried over and over to get me to make a friend. Never did she once consider that due to having avoidant disorder, I didn’t want any friends. I was content to go through life with as little human contact as possible. Every time she made one of her propositions, I would try to object, but end up doing whatever it was regardless. I guess she loved the rehabilitation part of her job more than the psychiatric part.
Sighing, I mumbled a sure in response and watched as she handed me a blue pamphlet. The front was decorated with a picture of a big Spanish style villa, complete with palm trees and a bright blue pool. I scrunched my eyes, her other idea had all been support groups in dusty churches with a group of seventy year old people who told me all their problems. What on earth did she have in mind this time?