Bland, white, sterile. Like most doctor’s offices. Not the most exciting to spend your day off. She didn’t need to be here, really, but you never know. Dylan came anyway, having always felt an obligation to uphold appointments.

The waiting was what keeps most people away. That hope that sours with time into annoyance.

Dylan couldn’t watch the television attached to the ceiling. It was stuck blaring Channel 5 news, “It Hasn’t Happened if you haven’t heard it here!” There was no rule against changing the dial, but its basic cable.

What’s the use?

She tried to bring reading material, but found it impossible to concentrate. She could hardly think with the volume being as high as it was. It was loud, fuzzy, ugly. The colors were severely dark with a hard brightness. The anchors look surreal and sound like bellowing monsters, reporting the atrocities of the day.

“Morganlander, Jonna.”

Then again, there was always life to be made with pencil and paper. She was trying to sketch, a baby girl, cooing and slobbering adorably in her mother’s loving arms. They were a couple of seats away in the children’s ward. Somewhere along the way, it was distorted into some monstrous terror.

Her pencil strokes were long and hard, each slash and slice executed with brutish agility. She didn’t know what she was making. That was happening a lot, lately. She’d draw with no direct objective, outlining blindly. Her mind on other things.

She had the same problem when she first began drawing. People were faceless to her. Nameless to her. Generic and plain.

“The weather today is bored and confused, sleep-deprived.”, came from far away.

She would look up every now and then, finding only anxiety and loathing. One fellow, young looking, seemed as though he was about to pop. He needed this wait like another bump on his dick.

Then there was Cell-phone Girl, present in all times of long waits, kicking in right when you didn’t need her. Apparently, her boyfriend’s, cousin’s, mother’s, dog’s walker, whatever, whatever…

“Rosenbaum, James.”

Most creative endeavors are credited to a stroke or genius.

Maybe she hadn’t been stroked in awhile.

She looked up at the screen to see the mug shot of a dead-eyed villain; the newscaster mentioned something about captivity. The image changed to that of a young girl in bikini, spring-breaking it, smiling brazenly, bizarrely, not caring about the wicked world one whit.

Why’d they use that picture?

She’s dead. Give her dignity.

The picture was starting to take shape: triangles. Dylan never understood why sometimes they were all she could draw. Eventually, they’d turn into something else, but now, tiny, tangled triangles.

“Garfield, Lydia.”

Eh, fuck it.

She put down her pad and pencil, slumping down, arms crossed. She noticed how old and raggedy the furniture was in here. For the most part, everything had been dusted, accomplishing only in moving it onto another place. Most of the chairs were either broken or written on. Dylan loved graffiti. To her, it was like messages in bottles, the last shout, plea of savior from desperation. She noticed one particular piece of green scrawled half evenly, then crookedly descending.

Definitely words to live by.