James sat in the waiting office, a nondescript place, an offshoot clinic of the hospital across the street.  But Doctor Shindell’s office was there, next to the screaming black babies and the drug addicts and the pregnant single teenage mothers.
  Every once in a while James looked up at Dr. Shindell’s secretary who smiled perfunctorily.  Still she was nice and had made an effort to put James at ease, and James appreciated nice.  Even though he was fifteen, he had already noticed the split in the population between those who made you feel at ease and made an effort to be human and those who didn’t.
  There were only three waiting chairs in the small office which sat adjacent to the secretary’s desk, and each time one of Dr. Shindell’s patients or colleagues passed by James, they had do so between his knees and the side of the desk.  Most of them were girls who suffered from anorexia or bulemia, or who had your other run of the mill teenage disorders and crises.  They came with their parents, were well dressed, probably not thrilled about being in this part of Brooklyn, but they were there to see the best, probably recommended by a friend or referred by a family physician on Long Island.
   As for James, his mother work at the hospital across the street, a medical records clerk.  Her son had been walking around, obviously upset, and since he would talk to no one in the family, she made an appointment for him with Dr. Shindell, who came highly recommended.  He was the head of adolescent medicine, and although he spent most of his time admitting crisis-level anorexic and bulemic girls to the hospital, James was no less an adolescent, and would see, and talk to him.
  The doctor’s office door opened and a girl and her parents stepped out.  They all had a look of forced happiness on their faces. Dr. Shindell himself was smiling a huge wide grin, a California, tanned grin.  He was a little too happy for the line of work he was in.  His smile was just a little too wide around the edges.  But he helped his patients.  
   “James?,” Dr. Shindell asked.  “How are you? I’m Dr. Shindell, come on in.”  They shook hands.  Everyone smiled.
   James walked into the office a couple of steps ahead of the doctor and sat down across his desk in a black leather chair.  He looked around the office.  Diplomas on the wall, NYU, University of Southern California.  He looked at the desk.  The doctor with a prize fish catch.  His kids, him and his wife.  
   Dr. Shindell entered the room.  He was about 5’ 9”, receding hairline, black salt and pepper beard, and the tan, and the broad smile.  And an expensive tie intent on conveying its own expense.  The kind of tie you saw in a Sunday New York Times Magazine ad.  
   “So James, tell me.  What’s wrong?,” Dr. Shindell asked, smiling is California smile, half as wide now, but conveying buckets of warmth, potential empathy.
  James paused to speak, but the words never came out.  In the pause, while he looked around the office and at Dr. Shindell’s friendly, empathic face, the ball began to form, somewhere around his chest and rising like a thermometer up into his throat and into his sinuses and behind his eyes, and that’s when the tears began to flow.
   “That’s okay, take your time, “ Dr. Shindell said.
   Now the smile was gone.
  But the tears would not stop.  The trickle turned into a sob and the sob into heaving and soon there was a river.
   “Hold on,” Dr. Shindell said, and got up, opened the door, and walked out temporarily, returning after a few seconds with a box of Kleenex.
   James felt slightly embarrassed, but, he also felt safe.  He also knew that this was a long time coming, and someone in the adult world had to have this unleashed upon them, and this was it.  The heaving went on for three minutes or so.  Dr. Shindell just sat there.  Every once in a while he’d say, “That’s okay.” James looked at his face, and Dr. Shindell looked slightly worried.  He was obviously competent, but something about this unleashing had slightly unsettled him on the human level.  His presence alone, though, gave James the sense of safety.
   Finally the tears subsided.
  “You know James, sometimes when you hold something inside for a long time, and you just keep adding to it, and adding to it, it’s like a pot, and you just keep adding to this pot, but it’s got to overflow at some point.”
    “I was religious.  I was going to an orthodox school, a Yeshiva, and I decided I did not want to do that any more.  My parents are not religious.  And now, I went to transfer into the High School in my neighborhood, and they got my transcripts.  I had been cutting school at Yeshiva, the second half of the day, the secular half.  And I have absolutely no credit.  And the new school is telling me that it’ll take me another three years to graduate with what I have.  I should be going into my junior year.  I have no idea how I’m going to tell my parents.  They’re going to freak out.”
   Dr. Shindell spoke, “They’re not going to freak out,” then let loose a hearty guffaw, like someone just told him the greatest joke ever written.  “They’re not going to be happy, but they’re not going to freak out.  You can tell them here.
   James shifted around in his seat.
   “Why    did you stop being religious?”, Dr. Shindell asked.
   “I’m just not from that background, it’s not fitting in with my family or, how I want to be.  When I see teenagers my age walking down the street, like a couple of friends together, having fun -- I don’t have that.”
   “How did you start being religious?”
   “Rabbi Smilen, he was my teacher in Hebrew school offered me a scholarship to Yeshiva.  He said it was for ‘the opportunity to learn’.  
   “So they recruited you,” Shindell offered and then laughed his hearty laugh again.
   “Yeah,” James said and smiled.  That was the first smile he had smiled in a year.
   “So how are you going to get out of this?”
   “What do you mean?”
    “I  mean, there’s always a way out.  This rabbi, is there any way of talking to him about this?  Does he know?
   “He pretty much knows.  They’ve pretty much been glorifying cutting school to me, it’s what they did when they went, and they probably would be happy if I had just stopped going altogether and learned all day.”
   “Learned? Learned what?”
   “Torah.”
   “The Talmud.”
   “Pretty good,” James said.
   “I have plenty of orthodox clients,” Dr. Shindell said.
   “Why do they come to you?”
   “Anorexia”
  “Orthodox people?”
   “Yep.  There’s a lot of pressure among the girls.  To look good, to dress well.  They’ve got it all, all the same crap as the rest of us,” Shindell said and let loose another five second guffaw from the gut.
   James could not help but laugh himself and soon it was a teary laugh fest with the doctor and James both laughing, James laughing through the tears and the running nose, and the 8th piece of Kleenex.
   “Can you talk to him?  The rabbi?”
   “I guess so,” said James.
   “ I want to see you here once a week, okay?”
   “Yeah.”
   “C’mon”, and Dr. Shindell opened his door, James red eyed, his eyes watering, his nose running.  He looked around the office real quick and saw the next patient with her parents waiting in the three little chairs.  He quickly looked away.
   “Barbara will set you up with another appointment.”
    Shindell shook his hand.
   “You’re gonna be okay.  You really are.  Don’t worry.”
   James took the doctor’s appointment card, walked past the three new subjects and walked out the door on to the street.  
   He wasn’t worried.