Chapter 3: Possible
The chiropractor's office where Amaya worked was icy cold regardless of the season. Over the years, Dr. Raymond's more frequent patients had brought in penguin and polar bear figurines for Amaya as a private joke. They covered her desk now, and gifts of mittens and knit hats filled one of her desk drawers.
She had worn the mittens once, even though they destroyed her already unimpressive typing skills. Dr. Raymond had glared at her all morning, but he'd turned the temperature up on the thermostat in his examining room, and her hands had slowly thawed.
Today, the air inside was at least twenty degrees colder than the sizzling day outside, but Amaya put on her sweater and greeted Dr. Raymond with a smile.
He grunted at her, grabbed the top chart, and went into the examining room.
"In a good mood today, isn't he?" Ms. Opal said, flipping through Vogue in one of the six waiting area chairs, peering down through her reading glasses at a cologne advertisement featuring a barely-clothed man on a tropical island.
Dr. Raymond's entire office was four awful shades of brown. Amaya didn't blame the patients for burying their faces in magazines as soon as they entered.
"Yes, ma'am," Amaya said. A grunt from Dr. Raymond meant, "I probably won't threaten to fire you or make you work through your lunch hour today. I certainly won't blame you for my ridiculous mistakes, and chances are, you'll get to leave at five o'clock like the rest of the civilized world." Other days, he was silent.
"Amaya, dear," Ms. Opal said, then paused to sniff a perfume sample. "I'm making cookies for my granddaughter's bake sale, and I need your opinion. Chocolate chip or gingersnaps?"
"I don't really know," Amaya said.
Ms. Opal glanced up from Vogue. "How is that possible?"
"I don't eat cookies."
Vogue fell to Ms. Opal's lap. "Why on earth not? You're thin as a peppermint stick."
"I just don't like them," Amaya said.
Ms. Opal harrumphed. "You've just never had the right ones. I will make you a gingersnap that will make you believe in heaven."
Amaya tried to discourage her, but Ms. Opal declared that she wouldn't be talked out of it and turned the conversation to tulips.
When Ms. Opal went in for her examination, Amaya returned to pulling charts and arranging them in Dr. Raymond's file slots alphabetically.
Before ten o'clock, most of Amaya's work for the day was complete, and she sat at her desk trying not to look as bored as she felt. She replied to an email from Helen, who ranked as her best friend because she had no others. Helen had bullied her into friendship years ago.
When the waiting room emptied just before lunch, she glanced around, then touched the pot of mini daffodils on her desk, brushing one bud with her fingertip, just enough to spur it into bloom.
Dr. Raymond left for lunch at eleven and rarely made it back before one o'clock. Amaya watched the clock tick toward lunch time, impatient even though lunch usually meant a sandwich at her desk. Today, it meant a sandwich and two hours to do what she wanted.
She hadn't allowed herself to look last night, though that's when she'd decided, right after she'd set her entire garden into bloom without losing a single blossom, without blackening a single branch for the first time in a lifetime of trying to get it right.
It was a possibility now: getting her degree and moving on to a job and a life she liked. It settled over her with urgency.
By the time Dr. Raymond finally left, Amaya was jittery with anticipation and the need to touch something, anything, and get rid of that awful ache in her hands. The daffodil had helped, but not much.
Amaya made sure Dr. Raymond's Mercedes was gone from the parking lot, then she snuck into his examination room and wrapped both of her hands around the trunk of the ficus plant in the corner.
The first time Dr. Raymond had come back from lunch to find his ficus wilted, he'd lugged it out to her and demanded an explanation.
"Ficuses rarely do well in Arctic climates," she'd replied.
He'd sputtered for a few minutes, then handed her his credit card. "Go get me another one," he said, "and take this one out to the dumpster."
Fourteen ficuses later, Dr. Raymond no longer asked questions. He dragged the ficus to the door and handed over his credit card, and Amaya got to spend an hour at the greenhouse instead of at her desk.
Still, Amaya tried not to kill the new ficus today, since it had only been a week since the last death. She succeeded in stopping before all the leaves went yellow.
"See," she said to it. "I'm getting better at this. I could…I could go." Her voice fell flat at the end, but she went back to her desk and pulled up the university website anyway.
Faces a decade younger than hers filled the screen, advertising the New Campus Life Center with wifi and Recreation Zone!
She clicked through to the list of majors and to tuition information and to financial aid eligibility pages, her heart racing but her hands light, no longer stiff. She ate her sandwich, concentrating so that the lettuce wouldn't wilt before she swallowed it.
"I can do this," she whispered, but after so many years spent avoiding the larger world, avoiding possibilities, she wasn't sure if she could.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone