Gemotions

The silence in the waiting room was a suffocating blanket. Each tick of the clock was a hammer blow against Eleanor’s fragile sanity. She felt like a trapped animal, thrashing in a cage of her own making. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps.

She saw the doctor close the door to his office and knew, at that moment, her life was changing. The world was about to be irrevocably changed.

A young man, perhaps a college student, was pacing back and forth. He stopped abruptly, his eyes wide, and he reached up to his neck, grasping for air. He was suddenly staring right at her. “Are you…?” he started to ask, before the words seemed to fail him.