Reading for a Client (fiction)

"Olive Breath"

A COVID story

I keep my breathing even, my best strategy to feel like I’m getting enough air through my mask. Sometimes anyway I have to take a deep inhale, feeling some cool, fresh air mixed with the stale breath accumulating against my skin. I had olives with my lunch, my breath reminds me.

I keep my breathing even as Martha starts to cry. She’s getting it all out. I don’t interrupt her. I feel goosebumps sweep down my arms in response to her intensity.

I watch the tears soak the top of Martha’s mask. She grabs some of the tissues always on hand and pulls down her mask to wipe her face. I feel bad that the tears on her mask won’t wipe away, but I’m more distracted by Martha’s face.

I’ve known her for five months. She has told me the most distressing thoughts that torment her, she’s taken me inside her self-loathing, and now I’m seeing her face. It’s not what I expected somehow. The chin longer, the lips thinner, and she has a mole on her cheek.

She’s human. She’s beautiful. I feel like I’ve missed that face, even though I’ve never seen it before.

Too soon, her mask is up again. The tear stains are there on her mask. Her eyes communicate to me much the same as they have before. I wonder what my eyes convey. I miss her face.

She misses her children, gone home now, scattered across the country, now that her father-in-law’s funeral is over. Gone another chance to be everything they could ever need.

I keep my breathing even, my warm lifebreath against my face, my lips dry even in this olive-tinged sauna behind my mask. She tells me she has abandoned her plan for suicide and she feels more trapped than ever.