THE WAITING ROOM

"Good morning.  This is Lisa Labuz and you're listening to Morning Edition, npr, WBEZ, Chicago."

Liza Labuz joins me many mornings on my drive to school.  This is how I know that I'm getting old - when I choose National Public Radio over XRT.  But let's face it: XRT isn't what it used to be.

But instead of driving to school this morning, a dark, marshy Thursday, we are on our way to Little Company for a cat scan.  Rose has a tummy full of barium and a mouth full of vitriol.   The windshield wipers provide the beat to her song that's stuck on repeat.  The refrain of blood draws and MRIs echo the song of her life.  Most verses are written by oncologists.

The album cover: a hospital waiting room.

Waiting rooms.  Most of my PTSD can be attributed to waiting rooms.  Filled with fear of the unknown, waiting rooms are the curse of patients and the impatient. The television volume, cranked to 62, bounces off the walls.  Charging stations spin webs of iPhone cords.  Yesterday's news litters empty seats. Word scrambles, Kleenex boxes, hospital pamphlets, and an unplugged coffee maker rest on the counter.  A poster of a cheerful nurse holding the hand of an elderly man in a wheelchair is pinned to the bulletin board. 

Today's surgical waiting rooms remind me of a Ray Bradbury science fiction story.  Artificial Intelligence controls the emotions of all loved ones in the room.  Family members and friends are the victims of the status board, hypnotized and controlled by its text or lack thereof.  Colors can inform and deceive.  Blue?  He's still in surgery.  Pink?  Recovery.  Yellow? She's on her way back to her room.  No status update?  Fear and panic.

Then there's the outpatient waiting room.  Today we can smile and converse with our early morning neighbor. Routine follow up. The cat scanner is simply making sure all is good in the hood.  I delete work emails while sipping cold coffee.  Bill reads literary criticism on Winesburg, Ohio and quizzes me about literary trivia, reading off his phone.  

"What two traits make a character grotesque?"

I conjecture, "Sympathy and disgust?"

"Close! Empathy and disgust.  Otherwise he would be a villain."

We continue to pass the time with a short convo of Frankenstein's monster, watching a home improvement episode titled Mixed Metals in which a hip blonde woman in an apron is smearing black cement on a mantel, sprinkling the wet mess with "materials found around the house."

Our neighbor interjects, "That is UGLY."

Bill and I erupt in laughter.  She's right.  Our neighbor elaborates with a story about her dental visits,  her heart, antibiotics, and her ex-husband.  He was an attorney.  She says, "I saw you takin that picture over there (pointing to the Purell and mask station).  I always end up in the emergency room after dental work."  Bill and I sympathize.  We know the grind of hospital visits.  

Rosemary appears in the door with a cotton ball taped to her arm.  Forty-five minutes was all it took today.  "Yours will be quick, too," I console our neighbor, helping Rosemary slip her arms into her jacket sleeves.  Let's get the flock outta here.