“Jennifer Larson?”
I looked at my watch. Thirty-seven minutes had elapsed since the experiment began and, given the several minutes that had elapsed while we struggled with their form, I judged it to be a success. Forty-five minutes. Every fucking time.
“Come on, Jacob,” I said, standing up and extending my hand with the idea that he would come and take it.
No response. I could partially see him under one of the ramps of the jungle gym, one little leg extending out to the side, his shoe gone and his sock mostly off.
I gave Jenny a look as she struggled to get to her feet, me only absently remembering to extend her an arm and to help her.
“Go get him,” she told me, as she started making her way towards the beckoning nurse.
I went over to the jungle gym and crouched down next to Jacob. All the other children had been called away by their parents and he had been playing by himself for the last ten minutes or so. I saw that he had found one of the many coloring books that were scattered around the playzone like fallen leaves, most of their pages already marred with the monochromatic smudges of oblivious toddlers pushing crayons back and forth across any and all lines. The pages of the one Jacob had found were relatively uncrumpled, and he was working hard at coloring something that looked like an especially cartoonish version of Noah’s Ark.
“Come on, Jacob,” I said with feigned excitement. “It’s time to go see the pictures of your baby sister.”
Still no response. He sat there in the relative shadow, the book between his splayed legs, his fingers holding a lime green crayon, carefully filling in the body of an elephant.
“Alan,” I heard Jenny call from behind me. “Let’s go.”
“Jacob,” I said, adding some stern Daddy tones to my voice. “Let’s go.” And then, with something that felt like an epiphany, I added, “You can bring the coloring book with you.”
Still no response. He was in his own world, ignoring me, perhaps willfully, perhaps not. I lacked the clinical discernment to know one way or the other. All I had was the boiling rage of a spurned and inexperienced father. I reached out and grabbed him by the upper arm, and began to pull him out from under the ramp.
“Owww! Owww! Owwweeeeeee!”
“Alan!” Jenny cried. “What are you doing?”
I released Jacob immediately. I had only moved him a matter of inches, but he quickly recovered that lost ground, retrenching behind his battle lines, and silently returned his full attention to the coloring book.
“He won’t come!” I shouted back over my shoulder.
“Then leave him,” Jenny counseled wisely. “You stay out here with him. I’ll go in alone.”
I turned and looked at her. She was right. She always was. Despite the fact that we had all come here together with the intention that we would all see the ultrasounds of the newest addition to our broken family, in the final analysis, it wasn’t worth fighting over. And it certainly wasn’t worth risking a full blown tantrum in another public place.
But the unfocused rage within me fought against this cool logic. He wouldn’t come? The HELL he wouldn’t. I was in charge here, goddammit, and he was going to do exactly what I told him to do. Who the living fuck did he think he was?
What stopped me was not the look on Jenny’s face, but the look on the face of the nurse that stood next to her. Both of them, the nurse and Jenny both, they saw the rage monster rising within me, and whereas Jenny’s face gave way to the subtle fear that helped shape the nadirs of our relationship, the look on the face of the nurse was a strange mixture of disgust and authority, the police officer watching the sloppy drunk tip and teeter as he walked the straight line of our society’s sobriety test. Unlike Jenny -- unlike myself -- the nurse, a young woman of no more than thirty and standing no more than five foot two, had real power in this situation. A power that she had used before and wouldn’t hesitate to use again.
“Okay,” I said as obsequiously as I could, rising from my crouch and standing in front of the remaining witnesses of the waiting area. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Jenny didn’t respond to that. She turned and went through the door, the nurse following close behind her. When the door shut completely I went back and retook my position in the chair I had left only moments before. I stole a couple of glances around and found no one actually looking at me, but I had the overwhelming sense that I was being watched very closely, probably from some secret location, maybe through the use of sophisticated surveillance equipment.
We’ve got an abuser in obstetrics. That’s what they were saying in the secret place. A man who beats his children and probably his wife. They were both watching me and taking Jenny to that same secret location, asking her if she felt safe in her home, if there was anything she wanted to tell them that she wouldn’t be able to say if her husband was present.
For ten minutes or more I was absolutely petrified. My eyes were constantly darting around and every time someone who worked at the clinic walked towards me, I started sweating, confident that they were coming to talk to me, or detain me, or arrest me. At one point, far down the concourse and back up by the reception desk, I saw an actual police officer -- a squat, thick man with a bald head and a goddamn gun on his hip -- and my bowels almost let loose. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, even moving to another chair to get a better look. As I watched, he had what appeared to be a casual dialogue with the intake nurse for a few minutes, and then turned and walked away, heading down the corridor that led to the exit.
Looking back on it now, I’d like to think that I was overreacting. I mean, how many screaming kids and arguing parents did they see in that clinic every day? But in that moment, with everything else going on in my life, I was convinced that I had crossed the line, that I was trapped, that I was going to lose my wife, my children, everything that really mattered to me.
Eventually, I was able to calm down a little. Jacob was still quietly absorbed in his coloring book. Several people had come and gone from the waiting area, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to me. Composed enough to know that I needed a distraction from these escalating fears and thoughts, I fished my phone out of my pocket.
There was another call that I had evidently missed, the little light blinking to tell me that they had left me a voicemail. I pushed the right buttons and held the phone up to my ear to hear this second message. “Hello, Mister Larson,” an unfamiliar female voice said into my ear. “This is Julie Prescott, executive assistant to Steve Anderson. Mister Anderson asked me to arrange a call with you sometime next week. Please call me back so we can compare calendars and get something set up.” She then went on to leave her phone number and to thank me for my trouble.
It was the lifeline I needed. I would call Miss Prescott back as soon as I got myself and my family home. I would call her from the secluded refuge of my own domain, and I would work with her -- two professionals speaking to each other on the telephone -- to set an appointment for next week to speak with Steve Anderson. The crystal ball of my beleaguered imagination couldn’t see any farther into the future than that, but it was enough. In my dark and terrible moment of uncertainty and worthlessness, it was enough.
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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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