Unsafe Zone

I’m sitting on an old plastic waiting room chair at the local government-funded mental health center—our county’s Medicaid recipients’ destination for counseling and psychotropic drug prescriptions. Who can find comfort in such a room, I lament. It’s small and windowless. The walls are institutional green and a lone potted plant languishes, badly in need of water. A wall poster of a fierce-looking young woman with tattooed biceps admonishes victims of abuse, “Don’t accept abuse; find a safe zone and tell someone,” she commands. Patients check in and quietly wait on the slick plastic chairs until their caseworkers or therapists summon them. Everyone moves slowly—the living definitions of those who shuffle without consciousness of it. Their shoes are universally broken-down, their clothes look almost intentionally odd, mismatched. I force myself to believe that dressing was an afterthought this morning; something barely managed in their state of despair, nothing in comparison to the desperate hope that they might somehow get better today. But a part of me is annoyed. Dressing nicely isn’t that hard.

I glance into the streaming eyes of a young man with a bright red face, his features twisted into an expression that might convey his soul’s condition, or might not. I can’t judge, right? But I shudder at the hell that might thrive inside that young man’s mind. Making eye contact with me seems to wound him further. His case worker arrives and someone sitting nearby implores the case worker that the red-faced boy “used to be able to run really fast, but he can’t now.” An old man clutches multiple zip-lock bags of medications in his lap while a nurse asks shockingly personal questions some in the room can surely hear. The man’s face twitches at every juncture of orifice and skin. His mouth kneads his tongue as though trying to coax moisture from it, as though he suffers from incessant thirst. “I need more Lexapro; I can hardly function right now,” he says with remarkable coherence. He’s counting on that learned statement working for him today.

I put down the book I meant to read. I pray for the patients; for blessing, stability, something. My heart aches, or maybe I just feel sick. I never get used to this setting. What would Jesus do?

The tasteful outfit of one of the caseworkers catches my attention as she stands at the counter, perusing a patient’s file. The gem in her necklace brings out the turquoise in her blouse perfectly. She returns my look—a bit too long; a bit too appraisingly. A swell of panic hits my throat and I realize that she thinks I’m one of the patients. Heat flashes to my face in embarrassment. I look down and realize that my black flats are scuffed and old and that I threw on possibly the most worn sweatshirt I own this morning because I was running late. Wads of paper, empty food cartons, a caved-in water bottle—my waiting room life is splayed out over the two chairs beside me. Clearly, the case worker is thinking, this is someone without boundaries. Who else would wear shoes like that? Doesn’t she know what a trash basket is? I can barely control myself from running across the room and explaining that I’m here because I drove a friend—a relative, really. I’m waiting for him. I drove him. I drive him all the time and pray for him and feel bad for him. He’s a relative, after all. And I do love him. But don’t make me identify with him. Don’t make me mingle my healthy juices with his sick ones. Don’t think I’m a mess myself. I close my eyes; God forbid I be a mess myself—marginal, disturbed, poor.

One of those last and least ones who might one day be first and most.

A version of this was previously published in Relief Journal.

Jean Hoefling is a copyeditor and author who loves fog, dancing, and church. Her latest novel, The Seed Bearer’s Bride, is a finalist in the 2021 Foreword Reviews indie book award contest for religious fiction.