The Incubus

Chapter 4, Scene 1

Justin and Rebecca waited. The doctor was running late with a patient, and so they found themselves waiting for almost forty five minutes after they should have been called in. Justin sighed and looked at his watch. It was an absent-minded move. He didn't take in the time, and had to look at the watch again before he registered the actual time.

'Could you pass me the Wonderfully Woman?' Rebecca asked and held out a magazine.

Justin shrugged and took the one from her hand and placed it on one of two piles of magazines on a small wooden table. He then leaned forward a bit more, picked up the requested magazine and shoved it into her hand.

'Thank you.'

Justin forced a smile and shifted uncomfortably in the little wooden chair that had been his prison for the past hour already. It creaked under his weight as if scolding him for not sitting still. Justin scanned his eyes across the room to see how many future mothers had been bothered by his shifting, but found none looking at him. He sighed again. It was so quiet that he could hear the seconds on the wall clock tick by.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The phone rang and Justin jumped a little.

'Doctor Taylor's office,' the receptionist said. She listened for a while, and eventually Justin thought that she had fallen asleep on the telephone. He wouldn't blame her. 'Yes, Mrs. Goemans, we have a cancellation on Wednesday at around ten. Would that be okay for you?' She nodded and scribbled something down on her notepad. 'Wednesday, ten o' clock it is, Mrs. Goemans. Right. See you then. Good bye.' The receptionist put down the phone and without looking up, continued with what she was doing before the phone rang.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Justin shifted again. He looked at Rebecca who was deeply engaged in an article about babies or something. For a split second he wondered what would have happened if that lamp fixture had fallen and shattered on top of her head. The image of a blood coated Rebecca made him shudder. He then wondered if she didn't perhaps turn out the fixture and broken it herself in a desperate attempt for some sort of attention. Since he got the job at Cybernetics Computers he didn't get to spend as much quality time with her as he used to.

Maybe that's it, he thought, but decided to rather spend his thoughts constructively by reading something instead. The chair creaked as he leaned forward to pick up a magazine.

He looked up.

Nobody noticed. Nobody cared.

Good.

Relieved, he scanned the options of magazines. They were mostly family or pregnancy orientated. He selected a family magazine and picked it up. After three minutes worth of 'reading', he caught himself absentmindedly flipping through the pages. He wouldn't know what was on the previous pages even if he looked at it again. He breathed deeply and then decided to actually focus and read an article.

'Mrs. Greene?'

Everyone looked up.

Justin and Rebecca both put down the magazines and stood. 'Follow me, please,' the doctor said and Rebecca and Justin followed her sheepishly as she led the way to her office.