Just dashed it off. Any comments/criticisms/explanations of what the hell it is are very welcome!
Patient
I’m shuffling the papers in my lap. It’s only one paper, really, and I don’t even know if you’re allowed to shuffle papers unless you have maybe three at least, but it keeps me busy, and so does this ridiculous, babbling monologue in my head. I’ve always been torn in my opinion of waiting rooms. They’re never associated with anything pleasant; tooth-pulling, anxiety-ridden hope, heart-pounding interviews, months-old copies of the Daily. On the other hand, I can never help but feel that they somehow grant me a temporary sensation of order and control over my life: the institutional machine, the process, things are being done. Problems are being remedied. At least you’re doing something about it. There’s a critical lack of doing anything in my life. That’s my general impression of things, anyway.
There’s a girl next to me. Small. Asian. Nervous. She’s been slumped in her chair for about twenty minutes and hasn’t bothered to remove her coat or scarf or hat, even. It’s so nosy and exciting to pry into other people’s imaginary business. I spend the next few moments inventing complicated and scandalous backstories to her presence here, probably way more interesting than reality. Or maybe not! I suddenly feel like Anne of Green Gables. This thought makes me let out a small giggle. The Asian girl stares. Time for a new game, maybe.
I’m holding my possibilities open. There are a couple other people in the room but I elect to turn my attention to the un-shuffleable leaf of paper in my hand. I read my answers over for the eighty bajillionth time. Ok, maybe fifth or so. It has been kind of a tedious wait. I’ve always found my handwriting to be pretty lacking. All the popular girls in elementary school had such cute, curly, feminine script. Mine was angular. It scrawled. I put years of conscious school-time effort into making my scrawl more aesthetically pleasing. I would take bits and pieces of other people’s writing and incorporate those characteristics into my own hand. Over a decade and a half on, I find my writing much more pleasing. I heard once that your writing has a direct correlation to your brain, and that people who get their hands get chopped off and have to learn to write with their mouths or feet turn out to still have exactly the same writing. All of a sudden I kind of wish my brain wasn’t full of bits and pieces of popular girls. Those pieces always sort of hated me.
My scrutiny of the shapely little figures on the page is interrupted by a voice. They’re calling out a name, mine probably. I wonder in passing if there’s a legal limit to how long one can be kept on in a waiting room. I imagine old people crusted to their chairs, idly sharing stories of their lost youth. They would have had to be sitting there a long time indeed for someone to get so desperate that they broke the ice with their neighbour and sent the whole room a-chatting, gums flapping. I guess you couldn’t really get dentures made to order sitting in a waiting room. Miracle of the internet, maybe? I keep hearing about those. They sound sort of important. There’s the voice again- it hasn’t stopped, so I’m adjusting the probability that I’m the one meant to be answering. It’s pretty high right now. I want to answer. Me! Right here. Righto. Going in now! I’ve always been good at following rules. Damn, that’s a lie.