Tony did not hear the music in his earphones as he sat in the waiting room, even though the bass and the synth drowned out the whining child across the room and the TV replaying a superhero cartoon and the hum of the fishtank and the occasional ringing of the office phone and the answering and the murmuring of voices and the moaning of the chairs beneath shifting weight and the crinkling of magazine pages turning.
Tony, not hearing these things, did not hear his music either, nor was he thinking. He waited in a sort of stupor, anxious, the noises within and without swirling around each other, building and canceling and being unheard.
He did hear his name called, finally, despite the headphones, because it was the only thing he had waited to hear for the last twenty minutes. He followed the nurse down a hallway into a small, white room. The walls were bare. There was a single chair, made of a dull, heavy plastic. The nurse motioned him to sit.
She glanced through her paperwork. “This is your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry. It really is painless.”
“That’s not what my girlfriend told me.”
She shrugged. “She’s just trying to scare you. It’s completely safe.”
“And painless?”
“Absolutely.”
“How long does it take?”
“We have you scheduled for a half hour session today. Doctor Beaufort will examine you at your appointment next week and decide then if you need any follow-up.” She retrieved a small bin from outside the door. “Please place all your loose items here. You’ll receive them back after the session. Any questions?”
“I guess not.”
“The door will be locked. You will be observed in case of an emergency. We recommend that you remain seated, though you are free to move around if necessary. See you in thirty minutes.”
She closed the door with a barely audible click.
Tony sat there in the silence and the emptiness. He studied his hands, the whorls of his fingers. This lasted about a minute. His eyes gazed around, looking for some feature, maybe the camera. Even the outline of the door blended seamlessly with the wall.
He stood and walked a few steps. The floor yielded slightly beneath his weight and softened the sound of his footsteps. He felt the smooth walls. He sat down again and waited. He started tapping on his leg, tapping his foot, without realizing it. He stopped. He didn’t want to come back. He needed to remain still and let the process do its work. He waited. There was no clock.
He followed the seam at the bottom of his T-shirt with his forefinger. He started humming an insurance company jingle. He caught himself and stopped. It kept playing in his head.
The silence grew louder in his ears. It started sinking down into his chest. His breathing quickened. He stood. He restrained himself from banging on the door. He stood in the silence, as in deep water. He felt heavy; he wanted to escape, to do something; he felt a restless, irrational prodding, pushing, scrambling in his chest. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, took a second, and forced himself to sit. The movement was as quiet as slipping into a still pool.
The panic passed. The tension remained. The silence roared in his ears. It was as if they were thirsty for sound, as if they were tendrils reaching out into the desert rock and sand, searching for a molecule of moisture, but all they found were more rock and sand, cracked lake beds and desiccated remains of life.
The silence had a weight to it, like tons of stone piled upon a spelunker deep in the darkness of the earth, like the pressure of the deep sea crushing a submarine. Beneath the silence, inside of it, smothered in it, Tony began to think. He thought thoughts he did not and would not speak aloud, thoughts that reeked of night and loneliness and death and the fear of death. He remembered words spoken and unspoken from the hazy past. He remembered the faces of elementary school friends and the sharp, bright edge of childhood hopes. He thought eventually of nothing; wrapped in silence, nearly shivering in the alien chill of the silence, he thought of nothing, but it was a different absence, something wide and peaceful, as of the blank ocean beneath a pale sky, waiting for full dawn and the whisper of surf.
When the door opened, it was with a soft sweep of air that seemed expressive of some new world.