Gemotions

The waiting room felt like a pressure cooker. Amelia paced, the floral wallpaper blurring in her vision. The rhythmic thump of her heart echoed in her ears, a frantic drumbeat against the silence. Another hour, she thought, another miserable, wasted hour. She clutched the worn leather of her handbag, her knuckles white. Across the room, a man with tired eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his magazine, a flicker of understanding passing over his face. He knew.

"That damn Dr. Evans," she spat, her voice tight, "keeping us all dangling like this." The man simply nodded, a shared burden hanging between them.

He pointed to the medical file clutched in her hand. "The fibrosis?" he asked quietly. She glared at him, that word, that wretched diagnosis, a brand on her soul. This man, a stranger, probably with the same affliction, was he supposed to make this situation better?

“Yes,” she ground out. “And you?”

He sighed, pushing up his glasses. “Same.”