Martha sighed again and leaned back in her chair.
A waitress with hair that hung down her back all the way to her waist came to take Martha’s order. She looked like someone who wanted to be a singer or a songwriter. She probably had a guitar at home. Maybe she even played at small clubs around the city, or at this very coffee shop.
“Do you know what you want?” the waitress asked. She had a harsh voice, kind of rough, really, and Martha hoped she hadn’t pinned too much on the idea of becoming a singer.
“I’ll have a mocha,” she said. “But with skim milk.” She was trying to cut back on her calories this week.
The waitress nodded without writing anything down, then turned to head back to the counter. “Wait,” Martha called. “Can I also have a muffin? Or coffee cake? Whatever’s back there.” She shrugged like she didn’t really care what she got, like she was just realizing that she hadn’t eaten breakfast and should order something. Of course, she had eaten breakfast. She’d had a bagel and then a big bowl of cereal, but that was hours ago. No sense in starving herself to lose weight. That’s not how it was done.
“Is cranberry okay?” the waitress asked. Martha nodded. She’d really wanted chocolate chip, or cinnamon, but cranberry would do. Yes, cranberry would do just fine.
Martha rooted around in her bag, hoping that for some reason she had the Dr. Baer notebook in there, even though she knew it was in her nightstand. She hadn’t used it in so long. She did manage to find an old to-do list and a pen. She uncapped the pen and smoothed out the paper, which had been folded up into a tiny square. Now she was ready. Ready to write down all of the horrible things that Dr. Baer had said to her and to deconstruct them.
But when she wrote down, You need to push yourself, it didn’t have the same effect. The problem was that when you wrote something down, you couldn’t hear the tone of voice. And really, it was Dr. Baer’s tone of voice that was the biggest problem.
At the top of the page, she wrote, Tone of voice was disapproving and harsh. There. That explained it better. Then she continued. Go back to nursing, she wrote. Challenge yourself. Stop hiding.
The waitress came to deliver the coffee and muffin, and Martha made a show of moving her paper over and giving the waitress a look like, Do you believe this? Look what I’m dealing with. But the waitress just set the oversized coffee cup and the plate down, and placed the bill on the table next to her.
“Anything else?” she asked, but she was already walking away before Martha could answer.
Martha read over her list. She really couldn’t believe the nerve of Dr. Baer, suggesting that she go back to nursing. After that nightmare of a job pushed her over the edge? All of those patients that didn’t have enough care? It was too much. Way too much. She had a job now, and it was a good job, even if Dr. Baer didn’t see it that way. Sure, it had gotten a little boring, but that was to be expected. And yes, Dr. Baer was right when she said that Martha was in a more stable place now. And maybe she was even right when she said it might be a time for Martha to challenge herself. Maybe.
“I hate my job,” Martha had said, as soon as she walked into Dr. Baer’s office that day. “Retail is killing me.” She threw her bag on the floor and waited for Dr. Baer to say something comforting, something about how hard it was to wait on people, but that it taught you patience and taught you how to treat others. But Dr. Baer had just sighed, leaned back, and said, “Tell me why you hate it.”
And so Martha had. She’d talked about how rude the new workers were, how she couldn’t stand the way the customers talked to her. “I’m a college graduate,” she said. “I could be a nurse if I wanted to.”
“So, why don’t you?” Dr. Baer asked her.
“I’m … well, you know why.”
“I know why you stopped nursing six years ago. I don’t know why you don’t do it now.”
“I have a job,” Martha said. “It’s not easy. And some days I complain about it.”
“You don’t just complain about it some days. It seems you