July 10, 2004
Waiting rooms
Doctor’s waiting rooms are no place to go when you’re sick. They’re too full of impatient patients, most of whom probably have some exotic malady without which you can do. The whole place looks like the Readers’ Digest graveyard. Any other magazines are also so out of date that their crossword puzzles are worked and what might have been any revealing pictures of starlets are all torn out.
Some waiting rooms provide an oversize TV for those who prefer not to read or whose eyes are dilated or who can’t find where the story they just started reading continues. The TV’s always on too loud and tuned in either to soap operas, game shows, or the Fox Cable News channel.
Whenever the nurse walks through, I always make sure she sees me look at my watch and hears me sigh. Or if she calls, mispronounces my name again, and tells everybody my birthday, I never get to know how the soap opera comes out.
When the big moment comes, I get to go to another, smaller, TV-less, and more clinical waiting room where to find out that my blood pressure is too high and my weight is too much. Then, when the doc finally shows up and asks, “How are things?” I’m tempted to tell her like everybody told the 9/11 commissioners, “I’m fine, there’s just been a systems failure.”