Relief

“I need to talk to the person who saw me yesterday. I think her name was Kristin. Yes, it was Kristin. I need to talk to her now.” 

The woman at the counter was firm, her anger restrained. The receptionist tried to explain that Kristin was with another client at the moment and could she please wait. 

“Fine. I’ll wait. But I want to see her.” Dani sat. She was tall, lean, with a face formed by intensity and concentration. She sat, leaning forward, elbows on knees, expectant, silent, patient as a predator. 

Kristin emerged with a great grin. “Dani. What can I do for you?”

“We need to talk. You want to do that here?”

Kristin shook her head, swishing her short hair. “Come on back.” 

It was the same white room, the same white lights, the same two chairs and narrow table as the day before. 

“I cried last night. I wept,” Dani said, giving facts. “That’s not supposed to happen. You never said that would happen. I didn’t even feel it. It bypassed my brain. The tears just came, and I cried for a long time.” 

Kristin nodded her head clinically. “I see.”

“Is that a side effect? Is it going to happen again?”

“The crying?” 

“Yes! What do you think I’m here for?”

Kristin tilted her head in thought. “How do you know the crying was bad?”

“It was an ugly cry. I bawled. It was hateful. I hated it.”

Kristin smiled sympathetically. “This does happen sometimes, but it is nothing you should concern yourself with. It’s perfectly normal.”

Dani breathed in suddenly, a catch in her throat. “Why?” 

Kristin touched the other’s hand. “Relief. You are your own again. You are free. It’s a powerful emotion, but it’s not bad.”

Dani smiled uncertainly and shook her head and blinked her wet eyes. “Is that it? Is that truly–?” She covered her mouth with her hand, took a breath, and recovered herself. “I remember looking at the pill. It was so small, like an aspirin, and I kept thinking of that when I drove away from here, when I got home, when I tried to watch something. It was small, hardly anything, just like–but it wasn’t even real, was it? It wasn’t real yet. It was just some lines on a test, that’s what I kept telling myself, but that’s when it all came, it just came, this emotion I didn’t understand, I couldn’t even feel really, and it wouldn’t go away and it was still there this morning, even though I cried and cried and finally slept, and it’s still here, I can still feel it, like a pressure, like something growing in me, something empty and dark, like something that is nothing at all. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what I feel–but it’s just relief. You’re sure? Of course you’re right. It would have changed everything. It wasn’t even anything, really. Just a few lines, a dot, the size of a pill….”

She turned away as a sob escaped her. She tried to control herself, but another ugly cry escaped. Kristin reached out to her. “It’s–“

“Don’t touch me!” Dani screamed. Tears ran down her face.

“It’s all right,” Kristin said calmly, a firmness behind her compassionate expression. “It will pass. Give it time. This, too, will pass.”‘

“How dare you!” Dani screamed. Then she laughed strangely between her tears. “It will pass.” She stood, chest still heaving. “Like a headache. Just a pill, and it goes away. It wasn’t anything.” She wiped at her tears. They didn’t stop.

Kristin stood, too. “Is there any other way I can assist you today?”

Dani walked out the white room, out the lobby, out of the clinic, empty.