The moment one walks into a waiting room, a sort of instant camaraderie is formed.
I should clarify. The moment one walks into certain waiting rooms—depending not only upon the room’s size and configuration, but upon the people in it—a sort of instant camaraderie is formed.
Such was the case for me recently. The waiting room was small, with only two rows of chairs facing each other. Once I sat down, all the chairs were taken; thus, the room was packed full. (And on a weekday morning, too.) If I’m being honest, I don’t like taking the last chair, as much as I’m thankful to have it. One, I don’t like making the people next to me uncomfortable. They left that chair open for a reason; they wanted space between them. Now I brought them into closer contact with a human being, and someone else’s personal space. It’s awkward to be so close. I understand. Two, if and when another patient walks in, I get to have the great feeling of being the last person to sit down. If I wouldn’t have walked in, this new person would have a place to sit.
Regardless, a kind of camaraderie between the patients forms in such a waiting room, especially when, as was the case, the wait is incredibly long. The longer everyone sits, the more frustrated—and thus, united—everyone becomes. At some point people may even begin talking to each other, in an effort to vent their frustration and thus connect, and in an effort to quell their boredom.
This, too, happened in my situation. I sat down between a single woman and a mother with two girls. In the row across from us sat a single woman, a woman and her older aunt, and another single woman.
I realized as soon as I walked in that something wasn’t working quite right—nearly all the chairs being taken meant that everyone was waiting. This wasn’t good. But I couldn’t do anything about it, so I had to succumb to that subtle half-conscious sense of doom. And it wasn’t long before the woman across from me to my right began making quiet comments, mostly to the older lady and niece next to her, and the other woman next to them.
After inquiring, I found out that that other woman had been waiting (granted, as a walk-in) since eight thirty. It was now ten forty-five. That wait, even for a walk-in appointment, astounded me. I had an appointment, but I wasn’t so hopeful I was going to get in on time, and I’m glad I wasn’t hopeful, because nothing was even close to being on time.
Meanwhile the lady who originally started talking joked that she wouldn’t have to worry about having enough “specimen” to get in the cup (for a urine sample). At this point, her jokes were pretty funny. Through listening to her conversations I learned the older woman and her niece were originally from South Africa, and that this lady had been at least a few times to Cabo San Lucas.
The woman with her girls next to me was pretty quiet, as was I. Finally when the woman who had been waiting since eight thirty was called back and came out about ten minutes later, the lady next to me turned to me and said something like, “You wait all this time, and the appointment takes only ten minutes.”
I agreed I didn’t understand it, and said perhaps it would be helpful if more people were working back there. It was her daughter who was getting her blood drawn, for the first time. After a while the girls got bored and went outside—pretty smart, and if I hadn’t been waiting to be called I might have done the same thing. Later I discovered it was the girl’s first time getting her blood drawn, and I tried to reassure her, though I had to honestly admit that I still got scared, too. And how much can you really minimize getting your blood drawn? That’s a decent-sized needle, and sticking right into the middle of your arm, right where you can see it (if you want to).
Turns out the girls’ mother was one of those people. “I like looking at the blood,” she said.
I chuckled and shuddered. “Really? You’re one of those people, huh?”
“I’m one of those people. It’s interesting to see them drawing the blood out of you,” and she motioned from her elbow up, mimicking the path of the blood.
“I just can’t do that,” I said, amazed. “I just—” how to describe being squeamish about seeing your own blood being sucked out of you—about feeling it? The feeling is worse than the sight. “I have to look away. I wish I could look, though, because I like medical stuff. But not that.”
“Oh.” The woman nodded. “I think I could work here, at a place like this. But not in an emergency room, you know.”
I nodded, thinking about my slight interest in ER work and wondering, if I can’t handle watching a needle syphon blood, why would I think I could handle working in an ER?
Finally the joking woman got called back. And then I got called up to give my insurance information—only to be told a few minutes later that the tech wasn’t finding my doctor in the system.
“The system.” Talk about a bureaucratic black hole.
By that point a man, and a woman and her son, had come in, and I took a seat by the older woman from South Africa. I asked about where she was from, and we chatted a bit about South Africa and different climates. She had been in the States for four years, her niece twenty; she found out I had traveled to the UK and was in school.
And then the tech behind the counter said she couldn’t get ahold of my doctor’s office; I was going to have to call it myself to get the pertinent information that would verify my doctor. By this time it was eleven thirty.
In short, I showed up, and waited forty-five minutes, for an appointment that never occurred.
But I learned about some people, talked to a few, and experienced an odd, slightly comforting camaraderie—the camaraderie of the waiting room. In that way the experience was not solely frustrating, but also a bit enjoyable. It was humans, connecting. It was basic. It was profound.
