The waiting room is dingy, with plexiglass windows barricading the receptionists from the sick and injured. It’s the kind of waiting room that calls for a shower upon returning home. But the radiology techs and receptionists are pleasant and kind, so much so that they seem out of place in this strip mall imaging center. A pop country radio station is playing and there are hand sanitizer dispensers in two dusty corners and one by the front door. A disgruntled man keeps checking his watch and then scowling vaguely around, as if hoping someone will notice his frustration without his having to get up to complain. The techs, kindness notwithstanding, are behind on appointments today.
“I got hooked on this show last night, true crimes show,” says a woman with stringy greying hair.
“Oh, yes.” A nod from the woman beside her, clutching a pocketbook. She knows of these shows.
“I mean! Finally I just had to turn over and face the couch. Otherwise I never would’ve got any sleep.”
There are plenty of empty seats but the women are sitting right next to each other. They entered the waiting room at the same time, most likely drove here together. Every once in a while one murmurs amiably to the other. They have been here close to thirty minutes now, waiting.
The women pass the time watching short videos on Facebook with the volume turned up too loud for a public space. You can tell the one with the pocketbook doesn’t really want to watch the videos, they aren’t to her taste and she is a little embarrassed by the display. She is being polite because they are acquaintances, and not, say, sisters. Perhaps the more decorous woman with the pocketbook is a church member who volunteered to accompany the other. Maybe there is a prayer chain involved.
The one with the stringy hair is living for outrageous memes funny videos inspirational stories crazy outfit changes. They are sending her in a two-dimensional world of distraction and amusement. The three-dimensional world has not been joy-giving in her experience, so she slips herself inside a flat one and turns her face to the couch when she wants to get some sleep.
When the tech calls her name, she puts her phone away and stands up.
“You want me to come with you?” Pocketbook lady squeezes the dangling fingers of her right hand, purposeless now without the cell phone.
“That’s okay, I’ll be right out. Remind me to show you this one with a skateboarding cat after. It’s too cute!” She heads back for her scans, smiling to herself. Her granddaughter might like that one. She’ll have to email it to her later.
The woman with the pocketbook seems uneasy now that the reason for her presence here is absent. She wishes she could be more like the young people these days who can loiter for hours enraptured by their cell phones. She does not like cell phones much, herself. Wouldn’t know what to do with it but call someone if she took it out of her pocketbook, so she doesn’t. Anyway, phone calls in waiting rooms are rude and she has nothing to say to anyone just now.
She begins listing the ingredients for lasagna in her head, mentally checking her pantry for each. By the time her charge re-emerges, having left behind the stark image of soft tissues and bones and blood vessels on a computer screen, there is a full grocery list going which includes ricotta and green grapes. The green grapes are obviously not for lasagna, they are for her husband because green grapes are the only fruit he will eat and she is always trying to keep him from getting scurvy and leaving her behind.
She sighs, shakes her head. “Ready, Freddy?”
"Yep! I told ‘em to make sure they got my good side. Turns out I don’t have one.” A good-natured cackle.
The two women amble out to a Nissan parked in front. A nice thing about getting old is you stop all that foolish rushing around. It’s not like it gets you where you are going any faster.
There was something very realistic about how the dialogue was conveyed in this, well done.
Stephanie,
Your writing about the human description is palpable. I just wanted to say that so well done. Emotions drip from the page. We have all been in "that room" in our lives.
Joel