"The Waiting Room" by Kate Choi
A teenager strikes up a conversation with those waiting to get new life dreams assigned to them.
“Short Stories For Long Discussions…”
Mission Statement: After Dinner Conversation is an independent, nonprofit literary magazine that publishes philosophical short stories to encourage discussions with friends, family, and students.
Letter from Tina
Our themed book, “Bioethics” is out!
Click the image to get your copy.
It’s a collection of focused short fiction that’s perfect for classrooms, book clubs, or leisure reading. Our themed books “Technology Ethics” and “Crimes & Punishments” are on sale now.
Would you like to be profiled in this newsletter?
If your story has been published with After Dinner Conversation, just email me the following:
Your answers to 3-5 of the interview questions.
The link to your story.
An author photo would be nice.
A brief bio written in 3rd person with your full name (or pen name).
Any promotional links you would like for me to include.
Please include “ADC Interview” in the subject line of your email.
If you have published philosophical fiction elsewhere, click here to learn how you can be profiled in this newsletter too!
There are many ways you can support After Dinner Conversation:
Leave a review.
Subscribe to our monthly magazine via our website (digital or print), or via substack.
Tell your friends about us! Start a discussion group…you can begin right here in the comments section!
Tina
Take the poll for this story, “The Waiting Room”:
Last week’s poll results for “His Neighbor’s Wife”:
Free Partner eBooks Downloads
(Updated Weekly, Click The Photo)
"The Waiting Room" by Kate Choi
Scroll down past paywall for audiobook of this story.
Listen to the podcast discussion.
Overhead the lights hummed. They were bright and fluorescent, and they reflected off the clean white walls of the waiting room to produce the unsettling effect of being folded away inside a sheet of paper. Cross-legged on the floor by the door, the boy squinted against the glare and tapped his fingers together—one, two, three, one, two, three. Across from him, a man sat on a long low bench, his knees pointed at awkward angles. As the boy watched, the man put a pen to a sheet of paper, scribbled slowly, and looked at what he’d written. Then suddenly, violently, he crossed it out. He started over. The cycle repeated itself twice before the writer flung down his pen and put his head in his hands, the pen rolling away beneath him. Across the room, the boy watched. His fingers tapped—one, two, three, two, two, three.
Finally the silence became too much. “So, I’m waiting, you’re waiting,” the boy said. “What are you here for?” For a moment the writer didn’t move, and the boy thought he may not have heard. But then the man shifted his hands and spoke through them.
“What are you here for?” he grunted by way of response.
“I’m here to get a new Dream,” the boy said. The writer nodded. He looked down and picked up his pen, but made no move to write.
The boy waited, but when nothing more came he prompted, “And you’re here to…”
The writer jerked. He had forgotten that the boy was there. After a moment, he said, “I’m here to get back an old one.”
The boy nodded slowly, though he had to fight the urge to raise his eyebrows. “Why’d you give it up?”
“Sorry?”
“Your old Dream. Why’d you give it up?”
“Why are you giving yours up?” the writer retorted, irritated.
But the boy just looked down at his fingers—tap, tap, tap—and said, “I ran out of chances.”
The writer didn’t scowl at that, but nodded. He, too, had run out of chances. He looked at his crumpled paper, tried to smooth it out on his knee, and scribbled again. He stared at what he’d written.
“You didn’t answer me,” the boy said, cutting into his thoughts. He shifted; the hard floor was painful to sit on. “Why’d you give it up?”
For a moment the writer looked as though he was debating whether to answer. At last he said, tersely, “It was foolish.”
“But it isn’t foolish now?”
“No. It’s still foolish.” The writer stared at his page, mouthed a sentence, then abruptly struck out the words again, drawing a furious scrawl of lines over the writing. “But all I have left now is foolish.”
As the boy opened his mouth to reply (though he wasn’t sure what he meant to say), a sudden commotion outside the room made both of them look up at the closed door. A few muffled shouts, one or two alarming thuds, and the door was abruptly wrenched open and a woman thrust inside, her hair a wild flurry of bright red and her body long and too tall. She turned back with a cry, but the door had shut as quickly as it had opened, and everyone in the room knew without trying that it was already locked. The newcomer pulled at the handle anyway, and when that failed, she pounded on the door and yelled. “Get me out of here! Come back! I’m not meant to be here. Come back!”
“It’s no use,” said the boy, still sitting by the wall, and the woman started and looked at him, only just noticing that she wasn’t alone. “They won’t come until they call for you.”
“But they have to—come back. I’m not meant to be here,” she said again, this time to him, but he only shook his head.
“If you’re here, you’re meant to be here,” he said.
“But I don’t need a new Dream.”
“But I don’t need a new Dream.”
“If you’re here, you must.” He added, his face soft and his fingers still lightly tapping, “It’s okay if you don’t realize it yet. You’ll see, soon enough. We’re lucky that they’re taking care of us—they always know what’s best.”
“No, they don’t,” she said, her hands clenched at her sides. Her hair formed a harsh red halo under the fluorescent lights. “I don’t need a new Dream. I don’t want a new Dream.” She smelled like flowers, like petunias. The writer hated the smell of petunias; he had once known it too well, before he became tired and lost all of his chances—before he had been foolish, he had been like her, like this woman and her petunias. His mother had smelled of petunias, too. Her Dream, like that of many before her, had been to invent a medicine to cure cancer… but she had worked too hard, failed like all the others, and when she died, even at the funeral where there were only lilies, the air had reeked of petunias.
For the first time since the woman had entered, the writer spoke. “It doesn’t work that way.” His voice was toneless, though, recitative.
That made the woman angry, not placated. “It doesn’t work that way! Of course it doesn’t. That’s not how they operate. That’s not how they do it.”
After a moment, the boy said, “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering, she looked around—at the white, white space, at the bench, at the poster on the wall with the words, “Dreams drive us!” in bright, big letters. “They’re giving me a new Dream. I can’t believe this. They’re giving me a new Dream.”
“You mustn’t have been successful,” said the writer. “What could you expect, if you weren’t successful?”
She sighed. “I’ve always been successful.”
“Always?” said the boy disbelievingly.
“I needed the Benefits, the Reductions. I had to be successful.”
“You speak like it’s been more than once.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to After Dinner Conversation - Philosophy | Ethics Short Story to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.