Excerpt:

She slowly walked out of his reach, his arm that was resting on her shoulder, more protectively then restricting, slowly dropped to his side. She wandered over to the nearest open doorway, and peered inside. He walked after her. He didn’t want her to disturb the session. He had no clue what she would do, he barely knew her. She could flip out and run in there screaming and scare everyone. He had no idea what kind of group was in there and what her presence would do to them if she interrupted the meeting. She could set back their progress for months. Okay he was being a little over dramatic. He didn’t think she would do that, but the Center did have these rules for a reason. He shouldn’t have let a patient that for all he knew could be unstable, out for a Sunday walk.

He nearly ran the three remaining steps between them as he saw her leaning through the doorway. It was a fairly big room but not very crowded. There was a lot of open space. Maybe it was a meeting for claustrophobics. The support groups were usually targeted towards specific, well, groups. There were about fifteen seats all situated in a circle. It looked like the meeting was just starting because people were still finding their seats.

Colin put his hand on Leigh-Ann’s shoulder again. She didn’t appear to be making any more movement towards the door. Instead she just stood there listening. They listened together. The support group’s facilitator was Colin’s coworker Bill. He was also a psychiatrist that worked here at the Center although he usually didn’t work in the teen wing with Colin. He had just introduced himself:

“Hi everyone. Well it looks like we’re all here so why don’t we get started then?”

But someone raised their hand, Colin couldn’t see who it was since the circle of people was blocking him. “Wait, aren’t you forgetting the introductions?” Colin could hear that he was smiling; he could tell just from the man’s voice that he was giddy. Well that eliminates some possibilities of the support group subject, he thought. Not every drug addict is so chipper. “Yeah!” someone else answered. This time they could see this member of the support group. He definitely had a huge smile on his face, and he was sitting on the very edge of his seat with his hands clamped tight over the sides like he needed to hold himself in place or he would fly up out of the chair. “We can’t start the meeting until we all introduce ourselves!”

Bill let out a huge sigh. “But we all know each other already. We’ve been having these meetings for three months.” And with a whisper he added, “And it doesn’t seem to be making any difference.” Colin was still confused; he had already forgotten to take Leigh-Ann back to his office already. They were too transfixed watching the meeting.

“Oh but it’s so much fun. It’s just like on T.V. We have to introduce ourselves.” And to Colin’s surprise they all started playfully begging Bill to let them do introductions.

“All right! Fine. Who wants to introduce themselves first?”

The same man that Colin couldn’t see said, “Well why don’t you go first? That one is the most fun.”

In an exasperated tone Bill gave in. “Okay I’ll go first.” He cleared his throat and said:

“My name is Bill and I am the facilitator of this group for Prozac Addiction.” And in a loud ringing chorus of cheerful, anticipating voices the rest of the group responded with:

“Hiii Bob!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Then a loud roar of laughter followed. It took a few minutes for things to settle down.

“Ugh! For the last time I told you my name is Bill!”

The woman on the right of Bill was bending over because she was laughing so hard and through tears she said, “We know but it sounds so much better. You’ve got to admit that that was fun!”

Colin was laughing as well. Leigh-Ann turned and gave him a puzzling look. “I don’t understand, what just happened?”

......Colin began to lead them away from the door. They shouldn’t be eavesdropping. He tried to get them to continue down the hall back toward his office instead of in the direction that they were going down before they were distracted from the Prozac Users Not-So-Anonymous.