In the waiting room of Alex’s normal pediatrician are wooden puzzles, magazines for parents (“Family-Friendly Restaurants!”) and books for kids about three years old: Elmo, bright plastic, marbles that slide down a track and make a noise. When I bring Alex this doctor’s office, if I’m lucky they take him right away – this doctor is a busy Manhattan pediatrician who doesn’t take insurance – and there are toys in that waiting room, too, great squat plastic things that always snag Alex’s attention. “Alex, no! Don’t!” If I’m unlucky Alex shoves a little kid aside for an Elmo toy while the kid’s mom pretends to not stare at me. Alex will be 16 next June.
This waiting room today, however, is for a clinic run by the agency where Alex gets most of his services. The chairs along the walls of the room are filled with people who rock and talk and wait for the door to click open and someone in scrubs to come out and announce that the patient can come in. We’ve come to see the (free) psychiatrist who’s going to prescribe more of the tiny red pills that make Alex more agreeable.
I fill our water bottle at the cooler in the corner. “Ricki” is on the TV. I take Alex by the hand to the bathroom, where we lock the door and he does his stuff and so do I, then someone pounds on the door. We finish our stuff and let the blow-dryer go off while the pounding continues and then we return to our chairs in the waiting room.
Alex fidgets, mumbles, yawns. “Alex, put your hand over your mouth when you yawn!” Everyone here realizes what he is or they’re too far in their own world to care. In a chair sits a man with legs and knees stick-thin as Alex’s; the man wears a grey T and jean cutoffs and his head bobs. He sits next to a man with a cane. I pat Alex’s leg and say something while we wait for the door until it goes click and someone sticks out their head and says, “Carlos!”
“Bla!” says Alex. “Pippo. What’s the point? Goodbye. See you tomorrow.” He claps his hands, his eyes wobbling and his lips apart. He seems to growl. “Danny’s coming? Wagon Road?” Danny is the guy we hire (off the books) to spend time with Alex, Wagon Road the weekend camp where Alex goes over the winter. “Wagon Road!” Alex keeps saying. “Wagon Road camp! Wagon Road! Wagon Road.”
“Wagon Road in the fall,” I tell him. “Danny on Sunday. Summer school for six weeks then Camp Anne in mid-August, with a few days for rec break.” Alex doesn’t have a clue what these phrases mean (join the club), but it’s just my attempt to string together syllables to make sense for him.
The lucky man named “Carlos?” comes back through the door, sits and starts talking about being on an airplane and having pictures on his phone. Then the receptionist at the front desk calls “Carlos!” for a follow-up appointment. He snaps his cane on the way to her desk and says, “Same time, same BatChannel!”
The woman who pounded on the bathroom door sits across from us in a pink top and yellow pants; she’s asleep with her head against the wall. She wakes up and fiddles with a drinking cup beneath the clinic’s posters (“Diagnostic Treatment Center [Centro de Diagnostico y Treatamento]”) and brochures that advise “How to Prevent Falls” and ask “HIV: Are You Feeling Better?” She curls in her chair in a pink and yellow ball.
Alex rocks and rocks in his chair, then leans forward until his hair brushes his knees. Then he gets up and flies around the waiting room (when in hell is it going to be Alex! through the door?), straightening chairs. "Ricki" blares to her dwindling audience of patients.
A woman with a sleek black carry bag sitting in one of the chairs moves her leg for Alex. She’s on a cannula, like Alex was as a baby. What is that size of tank? E? M? Alex has whiskers on his cheek, pimples. Once upon a time I envisioned this day, when I’d be sitting in a waiting room not with a baby but with a guy with whiskers and no one would look at us.
