Observations from the waiting room

The past couple of weeks I have spent entirely too much time in medical waiting rooms. I suppose ANY time spent in a waiting room is too much however, I came away with a few observations, meaningless perhaps, but I wanted you to know about them.

On a lazy, sunlit Monday I was sitting in a waiting room at a hospital about 10 miles from home, watching others in the room doing something I cannot comprehend, staring at phones in the palms of their hands. (I don’t carry a cellphone) An older man came out of a door that led to physical therapy, turned to a receptionist and said something like, “See you next time, Madison. (isn’t every young woman named Madison?) I’m going home to beat my wife.” Jaws dropped, and a long, uncomfortable silence followed. He thought it funny. I did not, yet I didn’t say anything. I was wrong. Avoiding a teaching moment is not my style, and if it turns a bit confrontational then so be it. I blew it. Forgive me.

If I can stay away from towns I absolutely do so, as I invariably see a side of civilized society that troubles me. I love the chaos and anonymity of big cities, but towns? Not so much. In towns I know too much, and I can’t wait to get home to my cats. As I type this my little cat Luna is sitting on a sill next to my chair, entranced by the impossible red of a cardinal in a bush just outside the window. Such color in nature always takes me by surprise, causing me to feel plain, drab, and unremarkable.

My other cat is a black beauty named Pippa, a cat we adopted from a shelter about the time my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Calm and regal, Pippa has been a great comfort these many years, a comfort I appreciate with all of my heart. She and I have ridden the great arrow from life to death, from grace to love, not really understanding most of it, but seeing it to the end.

On a gray, rainy Thursday last week I was in another waiting room of a medical center a couple of hours from my place. Young mothers waited as well, again, looking at their phones while their children squirmed. A door to the inner office opened and a young woman in a large wheelchair was pushed into the waiting room, the kind of wheelchair wherein you understand that the person lives in the chair, has likely lived in the chair since birth, not using it simply for transportation.

What I took to be a caregiver was guiding the chair, and she stopped for a moment while what I assumed to be the young woman’s mother checked with the receptionist. The young woman turned her head toward me and stared. I smiled from behind my COVID mask, and we locked eyes for what felt like an eternity, neither of us making a sound.

Then it was over, time for the young woman and her entourage to go. On their way to the exit door she could no longer see me, and she began to wail, a sound like I’ve never experienced, a yowl, a keening, a deep melancholy, a sharing with others what we suspect but seldom experience, that sometimes, even just briefly, all of the happiness and joy leaves the world, and a coldness and darkness take over. Then they were gone. The receptionist and I looked at each other and I said to her, “That was the saddest thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Then I teared up.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.