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May 05, 2004
This wont hurt a bit
I'm rather impatient. It's part of my birthright, inherited from my mother, passed through the wonders of genetics. In so many ways, I am my mother's daughter, but it's especially obvious when it comes to waiting in a sterile public health waiting room.
I tapped my foot slowly, and listened to the conversations drifting in from the hallway. Typical government health workers having typical health-worker conversations. Eavesdropping isn't a very good cure for boredom, so my mind soon drifted onwards.
I read every poster on the wall twelve times. My foot started to tap a little bit faster. There's a Drop-In clinic for expecting mothers on Thursday afternoons, and the Harrow Library is running a Baby Club on Monday mornings. I don't want to recall the poster about penises, nor do I wish to repeat the message about sexually transmitted diseases. No poster had any relevance to me, whatsoever. Except, perhaps, the poster about mental illness. I was developing one swiftly.
My foot stopped tapping. I started drumming my fingers instead.
Without anything to take my mind off the clock that was ticking like molasses, I went through my bag. I categorically sorted through each zipped pocket, removing lint and faded bus tickets. I went through all of the receipts that I had stuffed in my wallet. I sorted them out alphabetically. I re-sorted them into descending date order.
I had to swap arse-cheeks because my butt had gone numb. I went through the pockets in my jacket. I found some nail clippers and thought I'd hit the jackpot. I trimmed, filed and shaped my nails. My foot started tapping again.
90 minutes trickled by, painfully and agonisingly. I looked at my watch. It was 10 minutes faster than the clock on the wall. I readjusted my watch to match the clock, and then readjusted it back to 10 minutes fast. My watch. My time. I pointed this out to the receptionist who just shrugged and went back to her game of Solitaire.
After 90 minutes, I decided that I'd been patient enough. My foot had overtapped, and my ankle started to throb. I started huffing, and humming and tutting. I kept looking at my watch and it kept telling me that I had been there way too long. Right before I went totally loco, a little nurse in a white apron read my name from her stack of charts.
"The doctor will see you now."
I hate waiting rooms.
Posted by Jacqui at May 5, 2004 06:00 PM
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Comments
Found your post on waiting rooms through blogpulse.com. I just wrote a piece on waiting in a surgical waiting room. Nice to make the connection. And, yes, I can relate.
Posted by: Jeff at May 16, 2004 01:56 AM