We Had the Right Kind of Love // L.S.

Chapter 1. Fearless

I'm waiting.

I pull the sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt over my hands to keep them warm, bunching the rough fabric up in my small fist. As I shift on the hard, uncomfortable waiting room chair, I fix my eyes on the one piece of art hanging on the freshly painted white walls of the chilly office.

The canvas displays swiftly painted bold blue strokes that represent the sea, the opaqueness of the painted ocean creates a stark contrast with the two boys standing on dark wooden posts coming up from the water. The boys look happy as they gaze down at the sea below them. I wish I were them instead of sitting in this waiting room where the air smells of hand sanitizer and medical supplies, the stench making my head dizzy and my stomach turn.

This is the third time this week I have been to the doctor's office, tediously waiting for my mom to finish her endless meeting with Dr. Schwab. The TV drones on in the background playing a boring ad for goldfish crackers. The advertisement doesn't interest me, so I look away from the screen and start picking at a hangnail. The skin rips microinch by microinch until it comes off and leaves a small dot of blood on my cuticle. I suck the scarlet drop off with my mouth and throw the small piece of skin in the nearby trash can.

"Honey, do you want me to put on another movie?" the nice lady at the front desk asks. I think she's nice because she didn't prescribe bottles and bottles of meds for me. She doesn't poke and prod at me, trying to figure out what's wrong with me. She isn't the one making me come in tomorrow at six the next morning so I could be hooked up to an IV pole for the next two days.

"Could you put on NBC? Maybe Friends is playing?"

"Sounds good," she agrees and gets up from her desk to adjust the channels. Her name is Andrea and while mom is in with the doctor, she keeps me company in the waiting room, making important phone calls and clicking feverishly on her keyboard. The rhythmic clickety-clack sound calms me, so I don't mind being out here too much.

"It must be your lucky day," she smiles as the familiar guitar melody I've heard at least a thousand times, pours out of the small Bluetooth speakers set up on the nearby coffee table; "I'll be there for you..."

Along with the speaker are a stack of glossy health, fitness, and Hollywood gossip magazines. Usually, the magazines are in neat piles, organized by color and topic, but today they spread from one end to the other, and half of them are partway open and ripped at the edges.

"How come the magazines are all messed up?"

I know my talking will keep her from her work, but I'm desperate for someone to talk to. Not even Michael, my favorite nurse, is here today to ask about the new books I'm reading or if I'm excited for school to start up in the fall, so I have to settle for Andrea's company.

"You'll find out in a couple of minutes," she teases. "You see, I have a little helper who always comes to the office to organize the magazines for me."

"You and Michael don't do it?"

"Nope, a little boy about your age always does it when his mom is with the doctor."

"He's my age?"

"Just about. How old are you again?"

Michael wouldn't have had to ask my age, but Andrea wasn't Michael, "I'm eleven."

"He turned eleven in February," she exclaims, looking at her computer.

I wrinkle my nose; I had turned eleven in December making me older than this kid. I didn't like hanging out with kids younger than me.

Swinging my legs impatiently from the chair I continue to watch the episode, sighing and wishing I could be at Central Perk with Ross instead of in a sickeningly clean doctor's office waiting for my mom to finish her meeting.