Out of Time

"It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up."            — J.K. Rowling

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She sat, anxiously perched on the edge of the cold seat located in the back corner of the waiting room. The walls were the standard hospital white but covered with beautiful pictures of scenery—a poor attempt to bring liveliness to a place usually filled with despair. She looked around, almost fearfully, at the other occupants of the room, fiddling with her hands and looking up at them from under her fringe.

The room was by no means crowded. Or, at least, not the crowded that's expected of a hospital waiting room. Maybe because it was the middle of the day and most people were currently at work and not in a position to get terribly hurt. That doesn't suggest that the waiting room was empty. No, quite a few were currently waiting alongside her for news of a loved one.

It wasn't a happy room. No, it wasn't the maternity waiting room where new fathers made his way toward his happy friends and family to tell them that his child was alive and healthy. He was congragulated by many, them eager to help him welcome his newborn into the world. This waiting room wasn't depressed, either. It was a place where families gathered and drew strength from one another as they waited in tense silence to hear news-good or bad-of their loved ones.

Yet, she was here alone. Only she occupied the corner. No loving mother or doting father waited with her. No friend gripped her hand tightly and whispered reassurances in her ear.

She was alone.

She had no friends; they all abandoned her when her parents did. She had decided against making any new friends when she had started afresh in a new town miles, hours, states away from her old town.

As she sat alone in an area bustling with activity—weary nurses rushing with clipboards or families greeting new members as they arrived to join the wait—she regretted pushing everyone away.

In her solidarity, the clock on the wall seemed to tick louder and louder, becoming faster with every tick. It was all that she focused on, all she could hear no matter how hard she tried to ignore it; the metronome that was the clock as it ticked away her life.

That was a morbid thought, but considering where she was and why she was here, a likely one.

The clock sped up and, with it, her heart started pumping painfully in her chest. She felt a bit clammy and faint. Many times, as she waited in her corner, she had to force herself to breathe and she was sure she was dangerously close to having a panic attack.

How long had she been waiting for? She had lost track. It had felt like minutes but, considering how many families had passed through, it was most likely longer.

People say that time is caused by a person's perception. They say that when you're having fun, time speeds up. Same with how you're utterly bored, time seems to take forever. They had never mentioned that when you are dreading something and are desperately wishing that time will slow down, it also speeds up. Why is that?

A doctor came out, paused at the doorway and surveyed the room, before weaving his way across the waiting room chairs.

Her heart beat began to increase by tenfold and she glanced at the other occupants of the room desperately, trying to reassure herself that the doctor was not, in fact, heading towards her but towards one of them. But they just looked back at her sympathetically before turning their heads and adverting their eyes.

She had waited hours for this, quite eager to hear the news and be done with it, to move on with her life as well as she possibly could after today. Now, as she began to wish that time slow down or even reverse itself, it seemed to have sped up again.

The doctor reached her corner in seconds and looked down pityingly at her before his eyes shuttered back to professionalism. He took a deep breath to prepare himself against the news he was the unfortunate bearer of.

"You do have cancer," he whispered to her, "I'm so very sorry."

The girl, barely eighteen and already terribly alone in the world, slid down from the chair and onto the cold tiled floor before the doctor could catch her. The doctor's concerned face was brought into focus from her view on the ground for a second before the darkness swallowed her in her despair.

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A/N: Okay, I totally wrote this a whileback in July/August but I never posted it. I'm still not terribly happy with how it came out, but oh well.