FIFTY-MINUTE HOURS
Pieter Mayer

Dr. Ziedel sits at his desk, his eyes fixed on something high on the wall behind Charles. Charles is sure he saw a spider web or a small crack in that vicinity last visit, but doesn't dare look over his shoulder to check. Ziedel hasn't made a sound except for an occasional guttural chuckle since Charles arrived 32 minutes earlier.

More than half the session is over.

Charles fidgets in his straight-backed chair. He's quite uncomfortable. He wipes his glasses in precise little daubs for the seventh time. He does so with another of the Scotties that stick up from the flowered boxes Ziedel strategically provides for weepers. He's stuffed the used ones in his pocket rather than leave them on the desk. There's no wastebasket anywhere near Charles. There never has been. He pockets the tissues because he doesn't want to offer the doctor something to make an issue of. Ziedel might, for instance, ask Charles why he wipes his glasses so often or why he leaves the tissues on the desk in a small pile, which Charles doesn't of course. But Charles is afraid he wouldn't be able to justify either behavior, so he folds the Scotties neatly and files them.

Between the checking and rechecking for smudges, Charles explores Ziedel's face for signs of awareness. He hopes that this time, if he examines the doctor's face obsessively enough, Ziedel will notice his stares, join the session and say something that will fundamentally change the way Charles feels about himself. In other words, he hopes the doctor will take the first step toward implementing a breakthrough.

Charles clears his throat, "Ahhhhmmmm!" Ziedel wriggles a bit, tugs at his collar and for just a second, smiles at Charles—sort of. Charles hopes that Ziedel is thinking of a question to respond with, should Charles think of a question to ask.

He studies the tiny clock or rather the back of it that sits on the rear right corner of Ziedel's desk. It sits there, as it has since the very first visit, like a miniature easel, but one without any firm sort of support. Its little stand has always looked to be partly broken. The clock, which has become a symbol to Charles of his shaky relationship with his psychiatric counselor, often collapses before the end of a session. Charles suspects that Ziedel deliberately hides the time from him so he can always have the last word. "See you next week" and "That's all for today" snap out of the doctor, frequently, in the final seconds of the hour, like rim shots on a snare drum, startling Charles, and collapsing wonderfully poisonous thoughts he hadn't quite finished with, especially those involving his parents.

There was an odd little ceramic figure of a doctor that stood on another corner of the desk, but it disappeared. A ceramic stethoscope, Charles recalls, dangled from the doctor's neck. Several orange, well-sharpened pencils poked up from the doctor's bag. Charles could never keep his eyes off that little fellow. He desperately wanted to swipe a pencil from the bag to flip into Ziedel's eyeball to get some attention, but had never had the courage.

For three and a half years, once a week, at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, Charles has let Dr. Anthony Ziedel cheerlessly beckon him into his office for another session. That's roughly forty a year, time-off for Christmas, Hanukah, staff meetings and Ziedel's vacation, or two hundred fifty-minute hours. During the sessions, in particular the earlier ones, Charles expounded painstakingly and painfully on his families, parental and marital, his careers, his ups (there were few of enough of those) and every down he'd ever faced in public or private. He'd done this in spite of the fact that Ziedel had dozed or stared into space during a third, at least, of those two hundred monologues.

And why has Charles come to see Ziedel week after week, month after month and year after year? Because Ziedel, unlike the targets of Charles' internal rage, has never ever criticized or passed judgment on him. All he's ever done is to ask Charles why Charles thinks his life is the way it is. Charles has never been able to tell him. As far as Charles is concerned, their doctor patient relationship, with its ambiguities and long silences, remains unwaveringly centered in neutral. Charles has no idea at all how Ziedel feels about anything. But he's still convinced; well, hopeful more than convinced, that Ziedel will lead him, eventually, into the light.

An older woman with rheumy, bewildered eyes pushes open the heavy door of Dr. Ziedel's office, heavy, so anguished patients in the waiting room won't have to listen to the sobs of those who've preceded them. She oozes in and demands, in a quavering voice, an immediate audience. "Dr. Ziedel I..." Ziedel leaps from his seat in a flash, unhappy apparently, that his session has been interrupted. He maneuvers the woman back through door. "Later," he says, "Mrs. Grabble, please..." nudging her into the waiting room, without further words, He pushes the door to, and mumbling something that sounds like, "Grabble... Poor Mrs. Grabble..." returns to his seat.

Charles gives his glasses an extra little wipe. Ziedel plucks a bit of the woman's sweater-fuzz from the lapel of his suit, and settles down, just as the door finally snaps shut. The woman had lingered. With his elbows resting on the chair's arms, he taps the tips of his fingers together as though deciding something, then nods to Charles to continue. Continue? Charles wonders what the time is, but he can't see the clock.

Ziedel has closed his eyes.

The two sit in silence. Then suddenly the clock flops down on the desk, this time with a, "thunk", rather than the usual "clunk". Ziedel opens his eyes, smiles pleasantly at Charles and says, "See you next week."

Charles peeks at the face of the fallen clock, smiles back, and says timidly. "You're 10 minutes early."

"Oh?" Ziedel picks up the clock to check. Seeing that Charles is right, he smiles again, glances into the corner, at the crack, the spider web, or whatever it is he sees there currently, chuckles to himself, and closes his eyes again.

As far as Charles can tell the session has ended, early. As usual, he feels completely abandoned. He makes a final pass at his glasses and puts the tissue in his pocket among the others. He rises from his chair, nods to the silent figure of Dr. Ziedel and pushes open the heavy door. He closes it quietly behind him, then stops for a moment, to look at the last despondent patient still waiting there, slumped in her chair, for her own silent session to begin.

Charles sighs, puts on his hat, pulls on his gloves, and buttons his coat against the blizzard that's raging outside.

He'll return next Tuesday at two, but next time he will absolutely refuse to let Ziedel control the situation so completely. Next time he'll explain to Ziedel what's really bothering him, so that Ziedel can finally explain to him—with celestial clarity, hopefully—exactly what he should feel.

© Pieter Mayer 2004

Pieter Mayer, who lives in Quebec, Canada, north of Montreal, is a retired procrastinator, leaving the field to those who are better at it. His time is now split between the worlds of writing and snow removal. He's been trying to develop an ergonomic shovel and some sort of robot to use it. It's that, or move to Florida and live with his sister.

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