120 Steps

She's sitting there, staring at me with the worst expression on her face. I cringe as she blows the white puff of smoke into my face, but I can't really do much else about it. This woman is now the center of my world.

"Elle, I want you to take in a deep breath, and imagine you're in a cave. It's dimly lit." She takes another drag from her cigarette and taps the ashes into the black plastic ashtray sitting on the counter. The diner's not really crowded this Thursday afternoon, about 120 paces from the hospital. Yes, I counted.

"All of a sudden, you hear footsteps. First, they're faint, but they grow louder as you stand there, in the dim light. Who's approaching you?" White smoke in my face. I cough.

I see Mrs. Laverdy. No, I see...

I see me. Today, it's not my inner child, or the small koala taking a nap.

The bill's handed to me for two mugs of coffee, one which was untouched. The fiftieth cup wasted since I began this road to supposed recovery. I never drink coffee when I come here; I just order it to be polite. Mrs. Laverdy guzzles it down by the time I sit down. I hand over about six dollars, quietly tell the poor busboy to keep the change, and I'm starting back to the hospital.

One, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight--

"Excuse me, ma'am? You forgot your purse." A guy in flip flops hands me my vibrant yellow hand bag and smiles sadly. "Are you on your way to the hospital?" I nod. I work there, and Mrs. Laverdy is the psychiatrist. I pay her nothing, because this is some new experiment she's attempting to pull. Unfortunately, I volunteered to be a part of this bullshit.

"Do you mind if I accompany you there?" I shrug. The man has short blond hair and bright blue eyes. Looks familiar. A friend of a patient? A boyfriend?

"So, do you have a friend in the hospital?" I ask, still counting in the back of my mind.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen...

"Actually, this is my last check up before I hit the road." He smiles, hands in his jean pockets. He looks abnormally thin, and it bothers me slightly. "What about you? Are you visiting someone?"

"I'm volunteering at the hospital. They're short of nurses, and a friend of mine made me sign up." I remember when Alice made me sign up with her. I still hate her for it. "What do you mean by 'before I hit the road'?" I use finger quotes.

Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four...

"I'm going to sing and tour. I'm a bit sick of sitting around like a couch potato." He sticks out a hand. "I'm Andrew." His blue eyes sparkle. I smile.

"Elle. Pleased to meet you." We shake hands.

Thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine...

Oh, fuck it. Counting never did anyone any good in the first place. Look at Einstein. E = MC squared is only useful to make atomic bombs. They even named a disease after him: Einstein syndrome.

"You look upset." I stop and turn around, seeing Mrs. Laverdy sitting in her shiny new Mercedes Benz, watching me interact with Andrew. I see her taking another drag from her Marlboro, and breathing it out. The cloud of smoke surrounds her face. I cringe inwardly. "Elle?"

"Oh, I'm fine." My pace quickens, and Andrew is speeding up to keep up with me. The hospital's only twenty paces away, and I'm leaping like a hurdler to get there. Her break ends in another half hour. I'm safe as I step through the automatic doors into the waiting room filled with children and adults alike. "So, anyway...who's your doctor?"

"Dr. Brown." He's out on his lunch break. The only ones working as of now are interns and nurses, also known as those who never get breaks. I walk over to the station, and Beverly is handing me Andrew's forms.

"Stall him while I go get Dr. Brown, 'kay?" Dr. Brown is Beverly's distant uncle, but she's never called him Uncle Nathan. I guess the awkward Christmas dinners didn't help much with their relationship. "There's one room that's empty." She thanks me while sprinting off to find Andrew's doctor, and I stand there, slightly confused.

"What exactly does this mean?" Andrew asks, lost.

"I guess this means we get to learn more about each other." Hopefully this will have nothing to do with my inner child and my power animal, the koala. I motion to the cramped room. It's vacant. "Hope you don't mind spending some more time with me."

He smiles. "I'd prefer you over Dr. Brown."