Ambulance Ceilings: Waiting Room

     I spent seven total hours in that chair. It wasn’t consecutive, of course. But every time I sat down in the hunter green waiting area of Dr. Arnold Shapiro, MD, I timed it. This way, I knew exactly how many minutes of my life were spent waiting on this lunatic.

    As I waited for a small part of those seven hours, I would play this game I called, ‘“What’s their mental illness?” While I waited for the secretary to come and invite me back, I observed all the others standing by. An old gray haired woman sat diagonally from me, sniffling from time to time.

Depression.The child in the corner of the room that has spun in circles for 4, almost 5 minutes straight, had to have ADHD. The teenager sitting across from me wrestled with the leaves on the fake fern. A possible schizophrenic. No. . .wait... she is counting the leaves. She’s OCD, for sure.

In the front wall, there is a small window. A woman in scrubs sits behind the desk. Her attention is focused on the computer. From time to time, she will look up when someone approaches to make an appointment.

To the left of the window, there is a wooden door that leads to a hallway of offices. The largest one being Dr. Shapiro’s.

A different woman, a petite woman, opens up the door. She is also in scrubs. But unlike the woman at the counter, her scrubs seem to be devouring her tiny torso. Blonde hair curls from her ears and meets the neatly sewn v-neck. In her hands, she holds a clip board. She looks down at it as she says, “Ms. Campbell, we can see you now.”

I hate the expression “We can see you now.” It has a false meaning. They could “see” her before. They chose not to.

The old sniffling woman who sat diagonally from me didn’t seem bothered by it.

Her arms lightly shook as she put a hunk of crumbled tissues back into her purse, stood up, and walked past the front desk area. Her dirty white tennis shoes clopped from the waiting room to behind the wooden door until the sound was too soft to trace.

I sit back in my chair. Still waiting on my turn. For a short moment, I evaluate who was here before me and who came in after me. I think Mrs. Campbell was the last one who was in the waiting room when I entered. I should be next to go back.

I notice that in addition to the dust covered fake fern that is still being fondled by the teenager, the room is decorated in framed floral prints. The lavender in print is not lavender. It is periwinkle. I hate periwinkle.

“Ms. McConnell, we’re ready for you.”

I rise up and head to the wooden door. 31 minutes and 6 seconds.

. . . . .

Author's Note: Waiting room is a small episode from Ambulance Ceilings, a memoir-in-progress about my struggle with Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizures. A version of this piece was previously published in The Fioretti.