The space is lit by fluorescent lights so bright that if it were not for the four walls surrounding him, Alan would assume he is still outside. That familiar and unwanted scent of disinfectant permeates the air - probably coming from all the furniture and carpet that’s been soaking in it for so long. After checking in, Alan walks over to one of the guilty waiting chairs, the stench getting stronger, and sits down roughly. It flexes and clicks. They really should have better chairs, or at least ones that don’t leach chemicals into your clothes. God this smell! Next to him, a fellow waiting-room hostage - senses clearly dulled to the miasma - clutches a battered magazine folded over at the spine, stare directed in an uncommitted way at the words on the page.
Now I’m sure we can agree that, in the broadest sense, Alan and this other person are equals. They are equals in the sense that they are both characters in a story. They may be dedicated different amounts of space on the page, but underlying that is the fact that they get a mention at all! Woe be the poor characters who through the writer’s inattention, or the editor’s brutal slashes of biro don’t make it into the story, for they will never be on the same footing as an ‘Alan’ or even a ‘waiting-room hostage.’ Of course, this metric of equality doesn’t occur to Alan because he doesn’t know that he is a character in a story at all.
To Alan, they are equals in the sense that they could think about each other. Yes, that seems right. The wretched chair could not think about Alan, and so Alan and the chair are not equals. But his comrade-in-waiting could think about him - perhaps is thinking about him, pretending to read the magazine - and ignore this foul haze - but secretly playing the same conversation over in their head about thinking and equality. Whatever the case, this mutual ability to consider the other is what sets them on the same level. Call it empathetic consciousness.
But there is in fact another person who is thinking about Alan, and that is you, the reader. Perhaps you think him too sensitive to his surroundings, or that he’s on edge because doctor’s clinics usually unsettle him. Possibly his phrase ‘empathetic consciousness’ is a touch too pretentious for you.
The unfairness of it though! That the reader should get to think about Alan, but not Alan about the reader! They’re not even confined to this miserable waiting room with its insistent, nostril-invading poison! They—
Ah, that’s better. By thinking about the reader, Alan had made them his equal. How Alan despises that unjust hierarchy that places him, as a mere character, at the bottom.
Feeling satisfied with himself at an injustice well corrected, Alan looks over at the magazine being read next to him. The title at the top reads, ‘The Story of an Hour.’
“Hello, reader,” says Alan.