MEETINGS

This morning as I sat in the waiting room of my doctor’s office at forty-five minutes after my nine o’clock appointment, for which I had arrived fifteen minutes early, I wondered if I would have been happier had I gone to medical school instead of law school. A middle-aged woman was making conversation with the other patients about the host of the television show on the waiting room TV, the latest celebrity gossip, her personal problems and everything else under the sun. She had tried to make eye-contact with me several times but each time I successfully avoided her, instead training my eyes on the blank white wall or the brown carpet on the floor. I looked at my watch every five minutes as if that would make the time speed up or slow down. I had scheduled my interview at the employment agency too close to my monthly doctor’s appointment. When I knew there was absolutely no way that I could finish up the appointment and make it to the interview on time I called the agency to let them know that I was running late. The receptionist pleasantly told me that it would be okay and I could come in when ever I was done. What a relief. As my telephone conversation wound to an end, I could see the chatty woman looking at me, anxiously awaiting the end of my call so that she could pester me with her mindless attempt at conversation. Just as I hung up the phone, the receptionist called my name. I shot up, and looked over at the doctor as he forced the same smile across his face that he had worn for the several patients who had gone into his office before me.

I had been seeing this doctor for six months and after each visit I decided it was the last time I would see him. My psychiatrist is a very old (I can’t tell how old) middle-eastern man. I think he is from Iran or Syria but I’m not sure. He is rotund, robotic and emotionless. His face is ruddy and a pair of reading glasses always rest precariously on the tip of his bulbous nose. I’m not absolutely sure but I think he wears the same gray suit at each of our meetings. His office is not inviting, relaxing or even welcoming. Instead it is cold, bland and uncomfortable with faded light blue walls and a variety of unappealing, cheap framed art reproductions on two of the walls. Another wall displayed his numerous degrees and licenses. At the beginning of each visit, the doctor sits quietly behind his huge oak desk reviewing my file. If I try to speak during this time, he simply raises his hand, palm toward me, to indicate that I must wait until he has finished reviewing my file to talk to him. Each visit I try to hurry him along. I do not want to discuss anything with him. As he reviews my file, he nervously clicks the fingernails of his thumb and forefinger together. Sometimes he taps a foot in quick, short taps. Other times he gnaws at his bottom lip. I wonder if it will bleed someday during my visit. Today he is biting his lip.

I guess I keep going back because he gives me what I want. As long as I say the right words, he keeps me supplied with a monthly prescription for anti depressants. He looks like he needs them more than I do but that’s not my call so I refrain from advising him of this. I always pay my bill in cash because I want no record of my visits to the psychiatrist. That was the unspoken rule amongst attorneys so we could not be identified as “crazy”. The act itself seemed crazy since so many people know the big secret that so many of us are on psych meds.

The first time I decided to seek psychiatric consultation was about six months into my tenure at the firm. I noticed that at least half of the attorneys in the office were on something. You’d see lawyers popping pills whenever the veins in the temples popped from the unreasonably heavy case load or the abusive treatment by their superiors. Pills and drinks--that’s what we were all about. But what was more important was to hold on to the prestige and luxury of being a lawyer. Our secretaries and paralegals waited on us as if we were superior beings. Women threw themselves at the men and men hungered for the women. We ate at the best restaurants in town and the firm paid the tab. When we walked into a stylish bistro, wearing our eight hundred dollar suits and smug, self-confident countenances, all heads turned in our direction. We were ferried to and from work in luxury sedans. We were blessed by the gods with the right to look down upon almost everyone else in society except the judges presiding over our cases only because of the power that they wielded over our fantastical lives. A career could be made or broken based on a judge’s ruling.

That sixth month at the firm I was rotated to a senior associate who had a god complex. This guy had been at the firm for about fifteen years and there was still no partnership in sight, yet he conducted himself as if no one was good enough to be in his presence. He spat orders at his secretary, who dutifully went over and above the call of duty to execute his orders. He could be heard shouting abuses at his wife and investment broker with absolutely no regard for what anyone else thought. This attorney wore a dusty-looking brown toupee that sat on top of his head like a dead ferret. We had a standing ten o’clock meeting every morning and at each meeting for three months I was forced to wonder if he ever looked in the mirror while he was wearing that thing. It was so painfully, obviously fake and it was so completely disgusting that I often considered pointing it out to him. The way I imagined it I’d say, “Sir, do you know there’s a dead rodent on your head?” And he’d reply in great shock, “Oh my God, no! Thanks for letting me know Hank.” Then he’d spare everyone around him further torture by simply removing it and discarding it in the waste basket next to his desk. Then we’d move on with our meeting as if nothing had happened. Surely he’d rather be a balding or bald guy than look idiotic, pathetically trying to hang on to life with a naturally full head of hair by replacing it with a bad, outdated rug. I guess not.

I learned the most about the practice of law from that guy. Despite his vulgar personality and abusive behavior, he was a hard worker, worked long hours and he knew the law inside and out so why hadn’t he made partner? I personally think it was the toupee. When you’re sitting in a meeting with a client and you look that disgraceful it’s hard to be taken seriously.

One morning I went down to his office for our ten o’clock meeting and his secretary told me he was gone and he wouldn’t be back. I guess he finally got it and left the firm. What I couldn’t understand is why he didn’t tell me that he was leaving. There wasn’t even an announcement or a meeting about his leaving. His departure was painfully unceremonious despite the millions of dollars he had made for the firm.

It was as if that incident planted a seed in my subconscious that grew, unnoticed by me, quietly spreading doubt about my chosen profession. Other experiences would fertilize that seed and then at full bloom the doubt would manifest itself as my frustration with the practice of law.