Chapter Nine — Walking Into That Waiting Room
I've already described the specific, disoriented drive to Willowbrook Dental, arriving with no memory of the actual roads I'd traveled to get there. I want to describe now what I actually saw, pushing open that waiting room door.
Vera sat in a chair near the reception desk, thinner than I remembered and with a faint scar along her hairline I didn't recognize, but unmistakably, devastatingly my sister — the same eyes, the same specific way she held her shoulders when uncertain, features I'd have recognized instantly in any context despite ten years and everything her face had apparently endured.
We stood frozen, staring at each other across that small waiting room, for what felt like considerably longer than the few actual seconds that must have passed before either of us moved. Then we were both crying, holding each other with a specific, desperate intensity that drew concerned glances from other patients in that waiting room, neither of us able to form coherent words for several long minutes.
