Honey is older, nearly thirty years since that first feeling of being bitten by ants. She is back in corporate medicine, as a temp. Temporary, short term, maybe that will work better.

It is a joy to go in a room and be alone with a person and their monsters. Theirs and hers. Sometimes the younger ones haven’t experienced it, they are terrified if one of their monsters becomes a little bit visible, they hate seeing them. Honey tries to be gentle. If they only want to talk about the sore shoulder and not the stress and violence, well, she leaves the door open a crack. Sometimes the monsters cry.

Older people may be stiff to start with, but when they realize their monsters are seen, acknowledged, this isn’t another robot doctor in to say increase your diabetes medicine, lower your diabetes medicine, tell them a plan without ever connecting, the older ones lean back, sigh, and relax. The monsters play on the floor, Honey’s monsters playing with theirs, happy, engaged.

The hard part is the clinic staff. Honey is with them daily. The medical assistants are young. They kick their monsters aside as they walk down the hall. It is terribly hard and heartbreaking to work at her desk, with the medical assistants’ monsters cowering under their desks, kicked, abused, silent tears and holding bruises. Honey’s monsters mind. They climb into her lap and hide their faces in her shirt, under her jacket, peer over her shoulder. They don’t understand! Why can’t she be nice to THESE monsters?

Honey whispers to her monsters when the medical assistants are rooming patients. “I am so sorry, loves. If I acknowledge these, the monsters of the women working, I become a demon. It is very hard to share an office, no wonder I worked in a clinic alone for eleven years.” Honey has been through that. It is still inconceivable that some people don’t see the monsters at all. Is it learned blindness? Or just not developed unless someone had to learn it? Unless someone grows up in terror and seeing the monsters is the only way to survive.

Honey thinks some people learn to see them as adults, at least their own monsters. Hard enough to do that, without seeing the monsters clinging to other people.

Honey is tired of her monsters crying in sympathy with the staff’s monsters. She thinks maybe there are small crumbs that she can leave for these demons. Little gifts. Her monsters can creep under the desk when she is the only one in the room and leave something. A flower. A dust bunny. A crumb of a crisp. A small rock. A little gift to let them know they are seen and loved. A poem. A prayer. Just a tiny bit of love.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crisp.

The photograph is me all dressed up for the 1940s ball.

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