As I took a seat aside her, the chair new, the room sterile. I realized the calmness of my drumming fingers simply added to the annoyance of her clicking keys. Stark, white, and chrome fixtures. It was like being alive inside a coffin and somehow blissfully unaware of it. Clearing her throat, without a glance in my direction she asked, "So, how is everything?" I thought a moment of her question. Honing in on her use of "so" rather than the omnipotent term of "everything" I supposed those small add-on's like but and yet and dreaded so only eluded the anxiety of asking another what they were really feeling. Sort of like with Charlie when he, in mid-sentence, 2 months before said: "...but we can remain good friends." and Harriet who had been my only confident stood beside him. arm wrapped around his added: "Yet, not so friendly it becomes complicated." There was nothing logical about him or her or myself standing in a semi circle after I walked in on those two fucking. Charlie was my boyfriend. Harriet was my best girl friend since primary school and myself in this equation? I was simply just a fool. The sound of an impatient foot tapping and another unpromising throat clearing beckoned me from my thoughts. "Thank God." I muttered. "What?" She asked. "Oh, nothing." The little words. Those two or three lettered demons. We all took care to use them like they were our verbal weapons except I was here in this closet of a room with a woman I didn't know and the scent of antiseptic mixed with salt water syringe stung my throat. "So, how is everything Ms._________" and I didn't have to think at all. Instead I answered "To be honest horrible. Every year that's gone by and I grow older someone dies that I loved or gave a fuck about. Friends disappear into marriages, denial, or educational facilities abroad and myself? Well, here I am, in hospital, still empty, sad, and unsure how to find a balance between contentment and resentment. I tell myself I am fine when I am not. I think about death like its a drug because I don't know to live. I don't know how to love. I don't know who I am and I'm exhausted. So...." and I paused, "What can you do for me Mrs._______" Her fingers raced across the keys of her computer. Their relentless tapping becoming nothing more then a hum in my ears. She wouldn't stop, refused too really until at last my words, mingled with her own thoughts caught up to each other. She took a moment to straighten her sleeves and clear her throat for the third time. I swore under my breath about it and thankfully she didn't notice. "Well..." She began and at that moment time stopped I could see my own life clearly among the trash collected by myself: shit friends, shit lovers, shit parents, shit strangers, shit, shit, shit, shit!! It didn't matter. My life, my present or future. It didn't matter and I didn't care. I stood up, unsure if she continued or paused walked towards the door and entered the hall. Above me signs flickered: enter, exit and signs for A12-18 along with B6-12 were painted in thick, black, letters. I could go back into the world the way I was or I could stay here in hospital and become more unstable. Both options seemed inconceivable. Behind me I could hear throat clearing, heel stomping, and fumbled assistance button pushing amid cursed slurs. Soon I would be carried back to a room as stark, white, and chrome filled as her office. I didn't want to go. I couldn't but as I struggled toward the front desk staff that lie safely behind a sheet of plexiglass. My palm came to slam against it before being ripped away. I can't go back. I won't go back. I thought I had thought but was really screaming until the scent of salt water mixed with God knows stung my throat and nose. Click, click, tap, stomp, shit, shit, shit...I can't...I...and the world fell away. 3 hours or 3 days from now in a place where time ceased to exist within the myriad of little words like yet, but, well, and so. I was already deceased. The proverbial coffin I had imagined prior to the litany of everything had been closed and the darkness masked the stark, white, chrome and the scent of anything but myself and for the first time in 30 years I could feel the beginnings of a genuine smile where "nothing" was the "everything" and peace became my soul. Here, there was no light, no tunnel, no deity, just empty space to float and no one to ask me.... "So..."