Faith of the Conquerors

Greg sat in the waiting room, silently cursing whoever had decided that bamboo flooring was a good idea. He certainly wasn’t going to be able to get any rest with that irritating noise every time somebody got up from their seat. He looked at his watch again for the third time in the last five minutes. It was now 6:17 pm. He’d been sitting there for over an hour and a half, longer than he had intended to. There was no way he was leaving without getting some peace and quiet. He could hardly think straight anymore because of all the noise, and his eyes were starting to close on their own accord.

He stood up abruptly, causing one of the two men in suits seated next to him to suddenly jump in his seat as well. The other man simply stared at him with a look of disdain, his attention drawn back by the buzzing sound of his cell phone ringing. “Yeah?” he said into it, before looking at Greg, “You can’t go in there now! You have to wait until you’re called!” Then he hung up and put his cell phone away.

The first man looked somewhat embarrassed and began mumbling something about how he was just stretching his legs. Greg ignored both of them and walked towards the entrance door, where a young lady in a nurse outfit was standing behind an oak desk reading some magazine titled ‘Cosmo’. She smiled at him as he approached her.

“Good evening Mr…?” she asked after putting the magazine down onto the desk.

“Gregory Johnson,” he replied, noting that she didn’t have much of an accent, “Nice place you got here… what is it? Does it have a name?”

She smiled again and took out some paperwork from one of the drawers containing many more identical stacks of papers. She placed them onto her desk and then took out several pens from her top drawer along with an ink bottle with a feather inside of it. As she proceeded to fill out each paper by hand with all sorts of information about Greg – his age, address and phone number among other things - he took the opportunity to look around inside this establishment which had been built very recently on the outskirts of town by Asian immigrants who had made it big lately by buying up land at dirt-cheap prices thanks to their government loans which they hadn’t needed to pay back because they had won World War III against Russia back when Greg was still in high school.

When Greg was finally finished filling out all those papers and handed them back to her so she could file them away somewhere amongst her many other stacks of paperwork, she looked up at him with another smile on her face, “Your therapist will be with you shortly Mr Johnson… would you like anything to drink while we wait? Coffee? Tea? Water? We also have some sodas if you prefer something sweeter? I think we have orange juice too… or apple juice if you like apples better… or pineapple juice if you like pineapple better… or pomegranate juice if you like pomegranates better… or tomato juice if you like tomatoes better… but I personally prefer banana juice myself… do you like bananas Mr Johnson? We also have apples but I don’t know if we have any bananas right now but if we don’t we can get some later maybe today or tomorrow morning or afternoon or even tonight at midnight if it fits your schedule better…I can check our stock after you leave so we can make sure to have bananas available for your next visit.