sympathy

We were sitting in the waiting room, alone. she and I were sitting there; she flipped through a pop magazine, I twiddled my fingers. She didn't know who I was, and I didn't know who she was. Neither was I sure of who I was. It was the reason I was visiting the Student Health Department. I was almost sure they would send me to a school counselor at another building fifteen minutes away.
The doctors were busy. I admired their ability to tolerate sick people. Sick people... something about them made me want to stay away from them. But the doctors loved them. We had to wait for them to come out and call one of our names.
She and I had to wait for them. She had brown thick curls, soft lips and a gentle frame. She wore a grey shirt and blue jeans, and old, black Chucks. Her brown eyes moved from side to side of the magazine.
I wondered about her past, like I wondered about everybody's past whom I wondered about. I came up with nothing. I didn't care. My fingers were more interesting. I knew more about them than about the girl sitting there. I touched the scar on my right hand. I touched it and remembered. Then I looked up and she was still there.
She probably read some of that ordinary, superficial crap that makes cynics out of intellectuals. Her pale fingers slept down the edge of the page towards the corner, gripped and turned. She read a little more into the article, then she yawned. Naturally, I yawned.
It was the closest thing to sympathy I ever felt...