The lights are fluorescent and lend an unkind pall over everyone in the room. I am on an uncomfortable folding chair that makes a noise whenever I move, so I endeavour not to. On the other side of the room is a fold-out table, complete with a large silver urn bottomed with a black tap, the kind that would unleash deadly thick black coffee, coffee stronger than Samson, coffee which has percolated and then rested until it’s something that will eat through the lining of the throat before punching the caffeine jolt through your cortex. Beside the battered urn is a tower of styrofoam cups, the thick kind that squeak in your hands.

I get up and walk to the table, my feet hitting the linoleum as I go. There are other people in other chairs as far back as I can see. They too are waiting. They too have debated the table and the coffee.

I survey the table. A flimsy aluminum tray of cookies sits nearby. The cookies are bland and unexciting, as unexciting as the coffee. My hands hate being idle so I arm them with a cup of molten java, add a dash of powdery creamer, and as an afterthought grab a few of the cookies and go to sit back down.

I am intercepted by a woman wearing a blue suit complete with shoulder pads and a pair of winged 1950′s glasses. “Shannon?” she asks.

“Yes?” I reply, juggling my cookies. I hate being caught with cookies. I hate cookies.

“You’re up. Follow me,” she says, and without checking on my reply she turns on her heel, certain that I would follow her. Considering that my only other option is to sit on the crap folding chair, I follow her. We head into an office where she shuts the door, gesturing for me to sit in a chair. It’s a chair identical to the squeaky folding chair that I had just been on, and when I do sit on it the squeak is satisfying in its consistency, if not a little humiliating.

She opens a file and reads. I make thumbnail marks in the thick styrofoam, runners that I try to line up evenly and fail courtesy of a curved thumbnail. I wind up leaving half-crescent marks in a semi-regular pattern, which makes me feel oddly dissatisfied. I debate drinking my coffee but don’t feel brave enough. The cookies remain uneaten in my hand.

“Are you going to do anything with those?” she asks, not looking up.

“What?”

“The cookies. Are you going to eat them?”

“I don’t know,” I reply truthfully. “I don’t think they appeal.”

“Oreos?”

“No, they’re Hydrox, I think, not Oreos. Faux-reos. You know, if you unscrew them and stick them back together the fake icing isn’t as good and they fail.”

“Ah.”

“You should consider Nutter Butters. I miss those.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. We have Digestives.”

“Yeah, but as far as I’m concerned those are only used for cheesecake crusts. Anyway, I don’t know why I took these. I don’t like chocolate or sweets, really.”

“They remind you of home.”

“They do, that.”

“So what’s next, Shannon?” she asks, finally looking up.

“You tell me. I’m just here. I didn’t want to die.”

“No, but you didn’t want to live, either.”

“Yes I did. Well, no, not always. But in the most part, yes. And I definitely had brilliant reasons to live. Why am I here, anyway?”

“This is your assessment.”

“I see. Not an instant qualifier one way or the other then.”

“Most aren’t.”

“That’s all right then.”

She reads a while and I play with the crumbs in my hand, moving them between the creases. She looks up at me. “Are you happy?”

“Right now? I’m neither. I’m waiting. Waiting is surely neither happy nor sad, it merely is.”

“Were you happy?”

“Very.”

“Did you make other people happy?”

“You’d have to ask them. I certainly tried. I certainly loved. If you love, then that must count for something, right? Do you have a rubbish bin?” I ask, looking at the crappy cookies in my hand.

“Sorry, no.”

“Wow. This is hell then.”

“Very funny.”

She looks up and breathes out of her mouth. “Now then. You have two kids.”

“Yes. No, four actually, but two from the perspective I think you’re talking about.”

“What would you do if someone hurt one of your children?”

“I would hunt them down and make them pay.”

“We frown upon that kind of thing here.”

“Fine. I frown upon Sudoku, but it doesn’t stop it from happening.”

“Have you hurt people?”

“Yes and I regret it terribly.”

“Do you regret?”

“Naturally.”

“About what, Shannon?”

“Currently about picking up this coffee and these cookies but in a broader sense most definitely. I wish I’d relaxed more. Stopped and smelled the flowers and that nonsense.”

“Tell me your best attribute.”

“I love. I have loved. I have loved with everything I am. I will love forever.”

“What do you have to offer the world?”

I don’t flinch, even though I feel like that scene with Rachel from Blade Runner. “My heart. My heart and two little people that I gave birth to.”

“Let’s be real, you didn’t give birth, they were C-sectioned out of you. And you didn’t even create them.”

“No, someone with a degree in applied sciences created them. But they are of me. They are me. They are the best parts of me. Always.”

She stares at me. I feel every moment, every fluorescent bulb and every inch of the chair.

“Tell me why we should take you?”

I think. I consider the styrofoam, the hope, the fucking cookies and the love of a set of twins and of a man who makes me mackerel.

“You shouldn’t. I have fucked up again and again throughout my life, always regretting each and every mistake. But you should know that I am more than a cup of crappy coffee. You should know that if you break me in half what’s inside smells like Play Dough and Hello Kitty and baby shampoo. You should know that I learnt from my mistakes and made all new ones, but center in my heart were two little people and two older people and one man, because I want what’s best for them. Always. Forever. Everything else is secondary. I want for them because they are my heart.”

I wait. It’s always about waiting. And when you feel like I do, there’s coffee to keep your words company while you wait.

-S.