Waiting – Chapter 1

The Waiting Room

A/N: Hey! I know I have another fic to finish, but I've been feeling very uninspired lately. Things haven't exactly been peachy lately, to tell ya the truth. When this idea came along, I just had to write it. This is an alternate universe fanfic. Chandler and Monica don't know each other; Monica knows Ross and Rachel, Chandler knows Joey and Phoebe. Yes, very trite, so sue me. :p (Actually, please don't sue me. I've got nothing to my name!) Oh and Monica doesn't live across the hall from Chandler (although, I guess that's fairly obvious, since the two of them don't know each other). Uhh, I think that's all you have to know to start off. Anyway, I hope this isn't crap, since lately I've felt like that's all my brain has been spitting out. Please leave me a review, thanks! :) Eee and thanks to Waffle (Dupton) for his emotional support. :p

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this fanfic, but if you want to pretend I do, I would not argue. ;)

Chandler entered the waiting room. For a moment, he just stared at the faces surrounding him. There were five people in the room. One of them was a balding man, who looked to be in his early 40's. His skin was pale, and his cheeks were pink, like he'd just been out in the cold.  Chandler noted the blond hair at the sides of his head; it was golden, like sand at the beach. Chandler shuddered. He hated the beach – hated the water in general. Showers were two minutes of frantic washing that Chandler wished with all of his heart that he could avoid. 'Damn society,' he thought, as he tried to release the picture of the beach from his mind. However, the harder he tried, the more the image burned a hole inside his brain, shooting down to his eyelids, filling him to the tips of his fingers.

He took a seat beside a large woman, who sat with her purse on her lap as she read from Vogue. Her short hair barely covered her face, hidden deep within the crevices of her skin. Chandler could not help but envy this woman. Here he was, as protruding as a lone duckling during hunting season, when she could just disappear within herself. How he wished he could disappear. He wished he could roll up inside of his skin and never come out again.

Chandler forced his attention away from the woman. He had a way of fixating on figures that would catch no one else's eye. That was something he had acquired at an early age – the ability to lose his thoughts in other people. "He's just a people watcher, that's all," his mother would explain to those who felt uncomfortable under the young Chandler's unwavering gaze.  People did it all the time with celebrities – collected their autographs, videotaped TV appearances. However, in his case, he collected their pictures in his mind, remembering the way they flipped their hair or scratched their ears.

The other three women in the room were of little interest to Chandler. They each had the same air of contempt surrounding them, as if they'd already been wary of the first four people in the room, but now that there was a fifth, they were not going to pretend they were okay with the crowd. Chandler shook his head. One of these women was staring at the wall, her gaze so focused that Chandler feared her eyes would bore a hole right through the wall. He wished she would stop looking at the wall like that. Images of the building collapsing around them, once that wall fell, filled his mind.

That was the problem with waiting rooms, though. It gave those waiting in them too much time to think. 'They should call it a dancing room, get a disco ball, and play nonstop music,' he decided bitterly, 'That way no one'll ever have to sit in here and bore a hole into that damned white wall again.' Well, either that, or they should at least put in cafeteria. Chandler's stomach growled, as the receptionist typed away at her computer, callused toward those waiting in the waiting room, just waiting for the waiting to end.

The sand-hair man cracked his knuckles, causing everyone to look over at him. If his cheeks hadn't already been so rosy, Chandler was sure he would have been blushing. 'What a horrible way to live life,' Chandler decided, 'Embarrassed by your own knuckle cracking and having sand for hair. It's as if his soul never stood a chance for happiness.'

The sound of incessant typing grew so loud that it was almost unbearable. Chandler noticed the large woman put down the magazine and bite her lip. One of the stuck up women shuffled her feet against the ground as she struggled to juggle the contents of her pocketbook on her lap.

All of the sudden, Chandler was struck with a thought. What were these five people doing in this waiting room? What were the waiting for? Were they here because they wanted to be? Had they been forced, like him? ad they been focrced, like he?JHad Were they waiting to be fixed? Did they think that this place could really fix them? Once the pieces of the heart are broken, they don't fit back together. You could use hammer and nails or even just a hot glue gun, but as soon as you stuck the pieces together, they would crumble in your hands like dirt clots. The breakable was broken, and no amount of waiting in waiting rooms was going to fix it.

"Chandler Bing?" the receptionist called out to where the six of them were uncomfortably seated.

Chandler rose from his spot, slightly unsteady on his feet for a moment, before following the woman back toward the offices. She had curly, unnaturally red hair, and, in the split second that she turned around before she walked past him, Chandler noted the newly formed creases on her forehead and the sides of her cheeks. He nodded and smiled at her politely, but she just walked back to the front. He made a mental note of her behavior toward him. At that moment, it seemed like she deserved to be sitting in this office, more than he did.

After a minute, he took off his overcoat and placed it down on the chair behind him. Then, he loosened his tie, wishing that he hadn't decided to wear a tie to work. After all, it was casual Friday at his job. Well, it was actually Wednesday, but when you work at a company so large that your boss does not even know you work for him, people just don't place as much weight on the way you dress.

He peaked out the door, where he caught a clear view of the waiting room. The wall-staring woman was gone. He turned back around and began to examine the room. The carpet was an unflattering shade of dark gray, but the white walls were filled with vibrant wall hangings. He noticed a picture of a sunset, the orange sun behind the mountains reminding Chandler of an egg yolk on a frying pain.  Next, he focused his attention on a painting of a small girl with dark hair and a white flowing dress, galloping among green hills. The sky was every shade of color, even black in some spots. It didn't look professional, but as if someone had spilled watercolors over the sky, completely ignoring the girl who had already been painted with perfect accuracy.

Once he finished looking over the paintings, he began to walk around more. He frowned, noticing that there were quite a few clocks in the room. When he held his breath, he could hear them ticking – the minutes melting away slowly. He made a mental note: 'If I ever get old and decide to live in a room filled with clocks, rocking back and forth on my rocking chair, watching idly as the time ticks by, I hope my friends will have the common decency to put me in a home.'

Speaking of clocks, did this guy even know what time it was?! He was getting sick and tired of all this waiting. What was taking him so long? Their appointment was supposed to have started seven minutes ago. Weren't psychiatrists supposed to always be on time?  Maybe that was the Dominos pizza deliveryman – Chandler always got professions mixed up.

Suddenly, as if his thoughts had been spoken aloud, a person appeared in the doorway. Chandler looked up curiously, despite his desire to feign indifference toward the doctor's presence. However, when Chandler looked up, his heartbeat sped up and his palms became sweaty. He was not a he at all! He was a she! Why didn't anyone tell him that it was going to be a woman?! Hell, he wasn't happy about the idea to begin with, but now that it was woman…he needed to get out…

However, before he could send the message to his legs, the woman closed the door and smiled at him. The only response to that on his part was a deep, shaky breath. She was fairly short, with dark hair pulled back in a loose bun and thick-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in a conservative gray suit, a few shades lighter than the ugly gray of the carpet. She was the paradigm of her profession.

She sat down on an identical chair, across from him. The chair was black, with a thin black cushion and metal armrests. She crossed her legs in a very lady-like manner, straightening her skirt out once she settled, and then placed a folder on her lap. Chandler studied the folder. That folder was going to be his folder. Every word he would ever utter in that room, every move he would ever make in that room would be recorded in that folder. That thought made Chandler feel like both vomiting, and burning the folder until it was nothing but black residue on his hands. He was feeling all of this, and she hadn't even written anything in it yet.

Finally, after another minute, she adjusted her glasses and looked up at Chandler. Then, she smiled again, but did not seem at all unfazed when he did not reciprocate. Instead, she folded her hands on top of the folder and cleared her throat.

"So, Mr. Bing – may I call you Chandler?"

"No," he answered quickly, not even hearing his words before he had said them.

She nodded, "All right Mr. Bing, I can deal with that. I'm Monica Geller. You can call me Monica if you'd like, but from that pissed off look on your face, I'm assuming you're going to want to stick with Dr. Geller."

Chandler frowned. What was she doing making assumptions like that? Sure, he probably would have kept on calling her Dr. Geller if she had not made that comment, but still, it made him feel childish. Like she could predict every move he would make, before his brain even registered it.

"I'm sorry I was late."

"Uh-huh," he mumbled.

"Does that make you upset?"

He looked up, challenging her with his eyes. It had been less than five minutes, and she was already being 'shrinky' with him.

"Maybe."

"Yes or no? Your life depends on the answer you choose."

"Fine, yes."

"Now why's that?"

"Because I'm paying for this!"

Monica nodded, "Well, maybe I was late, but our session had already started."

"Sure it started…these clocks on the walls tick with my money."

"That's not what I meant. What I mean is that you don't need me to have a therapy session."

"Then why the hell am I paying you $75 an hour?!"

"Because a girl's gotta eat," she paused, while she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, "I wanted to let you get acquainted with the room before I came into it. You should always get to know the room you're in. If I was in here, you would've been thinking about and looking at me, not becoming familiar with the room."

"What the hell?! Are you a hippy?" he blurted out.

"Yes, actually. You'll have to forgive me, though. I forgot my bellbottoms and peace signs in my Volkswagen though."

"Whatever."

Monica removed her glasses and set them upon the desk behind her.  She put them right next to her pencil, which lay on a 45-degree angle from the wall. Her desk was so tidy it made him feel as if he was a messy child's playroom. "I'm not going to need those. I don't wear glasses."

Chandler stared at this woman with an incredulous look on his face.  It made him want to shake her. "But you were just wearing glasses!"

She laughed, a breathless laugh, as if she had been caught in the midst of an inexcusable action, "Yeah, appearances can really deceive, can't they?"

He scowled. Was this woman trying to play with his mind? Lower his self esteem even more? Make him feel like a complete idiot? If that was the case, she was sure doing a superb job of it. He stared at her, noticing how the strands of black hair came loose from her bun and fell upon her pale cheeks. She was teasing him.

"They can," he agreed, somewhat reluctantly.

"I'm glad you agree. That's why I'll need you to do me a favor."

"What's that?"

She uncrossed her legs and sat forward, elbows resting on her knees. "Stop sizing people up."

Chandler's heart sped up. He hated this woman so much.

A/N: Okay, if it's worth updating, I have written some chapters in advance (which I didn't for Writings on the Wall, which was probably my main mistake with that one. If you're reading that fic, don't worry. I will continue it, once the stress level dies down) so that'll mean I'll be able to update a few times, even if I'm bogged down by school work. I haven't had classes since Wed., since we're standardized testing, and I don't have any till this coming Wed., so I'm taking advantage of this [Physics]-free time. :P Anyway, I'm done rambling. Please review if you'd like me to continue!