reception || lina & nate
i.
It took a lot to get him here.
Six missed calls. His email folder -- the unreads were piling up, so he stopped looking at his screen. The same undershirt since Wednesday. Shower floor bone-dry, desert-dry, dry for so long now that his hair held every groove his fingers made through it. How many episodes of M*A*S*H can one man watch at once? There was a tv in the living room, but if he laid his laptop sideways on his mattress, he wouldn’t ever have to lift his head from its pillow. Netflix nudged him every few hours: Are you still watching? He slept through most of its prompts.
It took a lot. On the phone, making the appointment -- he hadn’t spoken out loud in three or four days, and though that number seemed way too high, his voice clawed at his throat ‘til he cleared it. Muscles atrophy if you don’t use them, he thought, heavy-headed when he stood. He was going to atrophy. He’d already started. And then he was ignoring even Mikhail’s messages, and he’d bit three fingernails down to the blood underneath, and there was only one psychologist in town but he had pretty good insurance, probably. Never really had to use it before.
The office was empty when he showed up. He didn’t know what he’d expected (an ER waiting room? a line out the door?) but the quiet was stark, save for the music behind the reception desk and the gentle hum of the AC. He held the counter like a ledge he was ready to let go of. Shoulders rolled forward and in. “Nathan--Nathan Stahl,” he said. Oh -- there was a sign-in sheet. He slid the clipboard closer so his handwriting could stay neat. “I’m early, but I think there are -- forms. New patient forms.”
