The Waiting Room

The lights were bright and the room was cool. The smell slowly started turning foul, and your eyes, well they were better off shut. I dislike hospitals, yet I’m here in the waiting room for a family member. The sickness that lies in this room is over whelming. I sit patiently across from an African American family. The mother chats with the father while the three kids are distracted by their cell phones. Next to them are a Chinese couple. They are sophisticatedly dressed and I know they are Chinese by the newspaper the man is reading. He must get them mailed. There are several people that sit in another row across from us. A Hispanic family are male and two females that are in there late 30's and sit next to an elder man on a wheelchair. His stare is blank and he hardly moves. His family looks concerned but they try to keep each other relaxed. The male has his arm around one of the females. The other female stands behind the wheelchair while speaking with the male. Their two kids are no more than five years old and they are jumping from square to square on the tile floor. Behind that Hispanic family is a mother and her son. The son sits on his chair and is on his mother’s tablet playing children’s games. The mother looks tired and would be asleep if not for her kid. At the front desk are two female nurses, one Hispanic and on African American. They sit on their computers typing away what I believe to be important information.

Hunger starts to set in as the minutes keep ticking away, so I walked over to the vending machines. I purchased a Snickers and as I reached through to grab it, from the corner of my eye I saw one of the Hispanic kids standing next to me. I know it’s his way of saying he wants some, so I walk quickly back to my seat. When I sit, I glance up to see if the kid was still staring at me, and to my surprise he wasn’t. His face had a worried expression so I followed his gaze. The elder man in his wheelchair was having a seizure. Suddenly there were five nurses holding him down, two of which were from the front desk. The man kept shaking and as if it were contagious, people quickly turned to see the man and stared without saying anything. The African family were the last ones to notice what was happening. The seizure finally passed and as if on cue, people suddenly returned to whatever they were previously doing. Not a minute passed before the seizure struck the man again. This time more nurses came and the man shook so hard he was no longer on his wheelchair. He shook uncontrollably on the ground and the father from the African American family urged to help but his wife told him to let the nurses do their jobs. He still looked very uncomfortable while the older man’s seizure took hold of him. When the seizure passed at last, the nurses immediately took him inside the ER. As soon as the man was taken in through the double doors of the ER, everyone let out there breathe. Conversations of empathy went through the room. My night continued with the foul smell and misery that lingered in this room.