Free Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish

selfish stages where speaking to someone who had the same last name took way too much energy. One day he kept bumping into me. We'd be in the kitchen and he'd brush against my arm. We passed in the hall and he reached out to grab my hand. After about fifteen encounters like this, I lunged at him as he ran to catch a ride downtown with his father. I pulled him into my chest and he fell against me in a movement that can only be called surrender. My fingers waltzed through his hair and I felt his sweet breath against my neck. He let his arms glide across my back and for ten seconds he was my boy again. Then the car horn beeped and he was gone.
    We never talked about that, but it happened again and I started going into his room at night and he let me massage his hand, and once I dared to sing him a song from the days when he was a boy.
    This did not last long. Shaun bounced into a darker phase after this and pulled so far away from me and everyone else he knew that I have not seen him come back since. I know he will. He will drift and move closer and pull away again, and then one day he will show up and find me and maybe he will tell me what it is that he has buried so far away from his own heart. It is something I count on, otherwise I may go blind with worry. I want my son back. Someday.
    My waiting room companion shifts abruptly to the left and makes me realize I am still in my psychologist's office. It takes me a second to remember why, and pulling that thought into focus exhausts me. It simply exhausts me. I cannot remember ever being this tired. When I think about it, my feet and hands and face and bones and blood and skin—every piece of me that I can touch and feel and visualize—aches. Wouldn't it be funny to be lying on the floor when Dr. C comes into the waiting room for this woman?
    Which she does, of course, the second I have this thought. The doctor looks startled to see me there.
    “My, you moved in fairly quickly.”
    “I came back for my purse and then I sat down and now I realize that I am almost too tired to drive.”
    The good doctor looks away and addresses the other woman. She puts me on hold by raising her hand as if she is trying to direct traffic.
    “Sydney, can you go wait in my office and get your usual beverage and I will be right with you?”
    The woman rises, looks at me as if to say, “You thought I was the crazy one,” and disappears down the hall.
    Dr. C stands in front of me, hands on hips, that hair hanging wildly behind her ears, and waits for me to say something. I have no clue.
    “Doctor?” I ask.
    “Meg, are you okay?”
    “Maybe not.”
    “Is there someone you can call?”
    “I already called her once. Do you think she will come get me again?”
    “Who is it?”
    I tell her. Everyone knows Elizabeth. Maybe she has been lovers with Dr. C. Maybe she has been a patient. Maybe it's her wild and wide reputation.
    “She will come.”
    Dr. C moves forward. She touches me on the shoulder and tells me she is a bit worried.
    “I just came back for the purse and then I sat down and then I started thinking and that woman walked in and I realized that people don't touch anymore, not enough. People don't touch just to say something like, ‘Hi, how are you,' because we are all worried about lawsuits, and then my mind realized that my body was exhausted and then—”
    “Meggie, can you stop?”
    “I have no idea, Doctor. I think I may be exhausted or having some kind of breakdown. What is wrong with me?”
    “Nothing is wrong with you, sweetheart, but you are suffering, right now, right this instant, from something known as depression.”
    “Wow.”
    She laughs when I say “Wow,” and her laugh is so damn infectious, I begin laughing too.
    “Meg, I think you need a break, but I need to go help my other patient now. Call Elizabeth. If she cannot come, then you must promise me that you will wait for fifty minutes until I am finished. Can you do that?”
    “Yes. I think I can dial the