The hallway hasn’t changed in three years. The trim and reception areas are still bright yellow, as though the sunny colour will melt away its visitors’ anxiety. The lights are fluorescent and the remaining walls a stark white. Whoever designed this decor must have flunked out of interior decorator school and lent his skills to the hospital in the name of contributing to his community. I’m not sure his community appreciates it.
The signage is confusing so we’ve come the long way – ironic, I think, given why we’re here today. The last three years have been the long way.
We see the same row of chairs that was here before and my husband and I both take a seat. We wait.
As we wait I look around and notice small attempts at personality in this otherwise antiseptic environment. There’s a child’s drawing taped to the desk, though no credit is given to the artist. Peeking above the window of an adjacent office is part of Shrek’s green face, only his eyes, nose and fluted ears visible. At the end of the hallway is a quilted hot air balloon with a smiling teddy bear waving from the basket. Meant to distract from the worry that something is perhaps not quite right, I guess.
Other details hint at how long this hallway has been here: A piece of the second ‘A’ missing from the Antenatal Assessment Unit sign. A faded, old-school poster about breastfeeding – placed there, I assume, by a well-meaning person who wants to lecture these soon-to-be-mothers before their children emerge, needing to be fed. I think of all the pregnant women this hallway has seen and how, last time I was here, I was one of them.
I was anxious then, too, but it was different. Three years ago this was the stop before the last stop, both a literal and figurative pulse check before attempting an external cephalic version on my stubbornly breech baby.
That time, I was determined to assert my in-charge-ness. The test was required prior to the OB-assisted baby acrobatics that would proclaim me as the mother. The one with the last word.
It didn’t go that way, of course. The results of the non-stress test were fine, but Connor had the last word anyway.
As I enter this hallway today I’m burdened by the perception that I’m not actually in charge of much of anything and I pinpoint that other visit as the start of the detour that has followed.
Three years ago I didn’t know I’d be taking this detour, or that it would be filled with so many wrong turns 
as I try to find my way back to the road that is my life as I expected to live it. These wrong turns – my own stubbornness in resisting labels, therapists who weren’t quite right, medication finally accepted (but not the right dose, it appears) – have left me stuck in a detour I don’t want to be on.
But today that detour has led me back to the yellow hallway, where someone who understands has agreed to see me. After hearing the details that make up the story of my struggle, she looks at me. I will remember that look as though it were a reassuring squeeze of my hand, for in that look I can tell she sees me. She sees my true road – the one I have come from and the one I’m trying to get back to – and then she offers me what I think might be a way to leave this detour behind.
