The Waiting Room
Nov 10, 2022 6:13:06 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 10, 2022 6:13:06 GMT -5
by
Radrook
Jeff’s father, mother, and sister, all sit in the small hospital waiting room with grieved, gaunt, faces of terrified resignation before the inevitable. Conversation is carried on in cautiously, hushed tones and whispers, as if they are sharing some unspeakable secret meant only for their inner circle. But as the slow hours pass, and the tension mounts, total silence finally predominates.
Through the waiting room’s wide, rectangular green-tinted, plate-glass-window, they observe the indifferent Chicago city lights twenty flights below extending into the distant horizon. They behold Jumbo jets from the nearby O'Hare International Airport, rise slowly and casually and fade gradually into the misty silence of the cold winter‘s night.
They imagine the passengers calmly awaiting arrival at their destinations, totally unaware of the emotional distress they are experiencing below. Jeff’s father remembers the famous painting of the swimmer who is drowning while others who are unaware indifferently go on with their lives. He ponders how birds might be singing happily somewhere while a mother weeps for a dead or missing child. They had sensed this poignant existential truth all their lives, but the horror of the moment has thrust it before them with a full savage force.
They attempt to hide the realization from one another. The situation would only be made far less tolerable if they didn’t. Yet, their silent unwavering stares into a far city distance, and their blank, expressionless gazes into one another's faces speak louder than any words ever could.
Hours have passed since their beloved Jeff was unceremoniously wheeled into the operating room. Soon, the surgeon will inform them. But even the best news will be a nightmarish reality. They stare apprehensively at the waiting room’s doorway, an olive-green, metalic door through which one doesn’t expect anything good to emerge, and they wonder why it was chosen to look that way, and by whom.
But it doesn't really matter. Nothing can alter the stark reality that tethers them to this moment. Secretly they envy friends and familiy members who refused to be present. Those who claimed inability to tolerate the extreme tension, and who vehemently blamed Jeff for what he himself brought upon himself despite their repeated warnings to stop. Then they feel ashamed.
No, Jeff wasn’t stupid in the sense of academics. In fact, he was quite bright and had proven it by graduating from college with high honors in engneering. He had proven it by successfully achieveing all he set out to achieve in the business world. In these areas, jeff had excelled, and they were exceedingly proud of his accomplishements.
It was his defficiency in another crucial area that landed him in the hospital with the need for drastic facial surgery. Now, because of that simple failure, his inability to stop chain-smoking, he would be horribly facially disfigured for life, and nothing that the plastic surgeons could do would ever restore what they had needed to amputate in order to save him.
The tall, gaunt surgeon, still attired in his green surgical gown, a man in his late fifties, has finally arrived and is standing solemnly before the seated family members. He explains that the surgery has been a success and that Jeff is being kept in the Intensive Care Unit untill all his vital signs are stabalized. They thank the doctor effusively for his effort.
“You can come visit him tommorow evening if you wish! He is in room 665,” he mutters tiredly in a practiced, emotionless tone. They notice how he averts his tired eyes as if trying to conceal some hidden guilt when he says the words “....if you wish”, as if he has inflicted something that he horribly regrets, or else, as if he would understand if any or all of them would refrain from seeing Jeff ever again to spare themselves the psychological trauma. This only serves to intensify their apprehension at the prospects of seeing him. After all, they know just how extensve the surgery has needed to be.
“We repeatedly told him to stop with the damn smoking, didnt we?” his father, a tall, guant man in his late sixties almost shouts once the doctor has left the waiting- room.
“But he was just too bullheaded, and kept doing it anyway!”
“Recriminations are not going to solve anything!” his wife, Jeff’s mother, says, while placing a gentle hand on her husband’s trembling forearm.
“Was it really too much to ask for him to listen to advice? If not from us, at least from the medical profession? Was that so much to ask from a young man of his intellgence, Clara?”
”Stop! Dad! Stop!” Jeff’s younger sister interrupts in tears. “Things are bad enough without going over this same thing again. What’s done is done, and nothing can change it. Neither our tears nor anger. NOTHING you here! Nothing! “
Her mother embraces her in a comforting hug, and then they all leave the hospital in silence.
None sleep soundly that night due to the tension which their visit the next day promises. It is a Sunday, and they first attend church in order to get some support from the pastor and the congregation. But all they receive are recriminatory stares and the sermon is one that seems specifically geared towards the condemnation of sin and the deserved consequences that all those who refuse to listen to Biblical counsel receive. They leave before the sermon is over more somber than they had arrived.
At the Hospital reception-desk, when they mention Jef, the receptionst freezes as if struck by a bolt of galvanizing electricity.
“He’s in room 655,” she utters ominously.
Then they hear the nurses whispering as they make their way down the long corridor. Words such as amputee, horrible, disfigured! stupid!, were being said in barely-concealed tones. Once there, they hesitated before the room’s door, which was kept closed, while many of the other doors were fully opened. Finally, they summon the courage to enter and find that their Jeff is sound asleep as they had expected him to be from the effects of the anesthesia and pain-killers. No, he is no longer the young, and handsome Jeff they had known. His entire jaw has been removed, and there are only blooddied bangages where it should have been. But despite it all, he is still Jeff, their beloved son and his sister’s brother. They also quickly notice two packs of Marlborro Cigarretes, his favorite brand, on the bedside table, the very things which had caused him the cancer that had led to the surgery. They summon the nurse and ask why.
“He said that he was going to smoke them through a slit he would make in the throat bandages as soon as he was healed enough to do it. We told him it was stupid, but he wrote on a pieceof paper that he had a right to smoke and wanted to have them ready as soon as he could go home.”
After frowning and shaking her head, with eyes lowered to the floor, the nurse leaves so they can talk to their son Jeff, the difigured jaw amputee, but they all silently follow her out and never return.
Through the waiting room’s wide, rectangular green-tinted, plate-glass-window, they observe the indifferent Chicago city lights twenty flights below extending into the distant horizon. They behold Jumbo jets from the nearby O'Hare International Airport, rise slowly and casually and fade gradually into the misty silence of the cold winter‘s night.
They imagine the passengers calmly awaiting arrival at their destinations, totally unaware of the emotional distress they are experiencing below. Jeff’s father remembers the famous painting of the swimmer who is drowning while others who are unaware indifferently go on with their lives. He ponders how birds might be singing happily somewhere while a mother weeps for a dead or missing child. They had sensed this poignant existential truth all their lives, but the horror of the moment has thrust it before them with a full savage force.
They attempt to hide the realization from one another. The situation would only be made far less tolerable if they didn’t. Yet, their silent unwavering stares into a far city distance, and their blank, expressionless gazes into one another's faces speak louder than any words ever could.
Hours have passed since their beloved Jeff was unceremoniously wheeled into the operating room. Soon, the surgeon will inform them. But even the best news will be a nightmarish reality. They stare apprehensively at the waiting room’s doorway, an olive-green, metalic door through which one doesn’t expect anything good to emerge, and they wonder why it was chosen to look that way, and by whom.
But it doesn't really matter. Nothing can alter the stark reality that tethers them to this moment. Secretly they envy friends and familiy members who refused to be present. Those who claimed inability to tolerate the extreme tension, and who vehemently blamed Jeff for what he himself brought upon himself despite their repeated warnings to stop. Then they feel ashamed.
No, Jeff wasn’t stupid in the sense of academics. In fact, he was quite bright and had proven it by graduating from college with high honors in engneering. He had proven it by successfully achieveing all he set out to achieve in the business world. In these areas, jeff had excelled, and they were exceedingly proud of his accomplishements.
It was his defficiency in another crucial area that landed him in the hospital with the need for drastic facial surgery. Now, because of that simple failure, his inability to stop chain-smoking, he would be horribly facially disfigured for life, and nothing that the plastic surgeons could do would ever restore what they had needed to amputate in order to save him.
The tall, gaunt surgeon, still attired in his green surgical gown, a man in his late fifties, has finally arrived and is standing solemnly before the seated family members. He explains that the surgery has been a success and that Jeff is being kept in the Intensive Care Unit untill all his vital signs are stabalized. They thank the doctor effusively for his effort.
“You can come visit him tommorow evening if you wish! He is in room 665,” he mutters tiredly in a practiced, emotionless tone. They notice how he averts his tired eyes as if trying to conceal some hidden guilt when he says the words “....if you wish”, as if he has inflicted something that he horribly regrets, or else, as if he would understand if any or all of them would refrain from seeing Jeff ever again to spare themselves the psychological trauma. This only serves to intensify their apprehension at the prospects of seeing him. After all, they know just how extensve the surgery has needed to be.
“We repeatedly told him to stop with the damn smoking, didnt we?” his father, a tall, guant man in his late sixties almost shouts once the doctor has left the waiting- room.
“But he was just too bullheaded, and kept doing it anyway!”
“Recriminations are not going to solve anything!” his wife, Jeff’s mother, says, while placing a gentle hand on her husband’s trembling forearm.
“Was it really too much to ask for him to listen to advice? If not from us, at least from the medical profession? Was that so much to ask from a young man of his intellgence, Clara?”
”Stop! Dad! Stop!” Jeff’s younger sister interrupts in tears. “Things are bad enough without going over this same thing again. What’s done is done, and nothing can change it. Neither our tears nor anger. NOTHING you here! Nothing! “
Her mother embraces her in a comforting hug, and then they all leave the hospital in silence.
None sleep soundly that night due to the tension which their visit the next day promises. It is a Sunday, and they first attend church in order to get some support from the pastor and the congregation. But all they receive are recriminatory stares and the sermon is one that seems specifically geared towards the condemnation of sin and the deserved consequences that all those who refuse to listen to Biblical counsel receive. They leave before the sermon is over more somber than they had arrived.
At the Hospital reception-desk, when they mention Jef, the receptionst freezes as if struck by a bolt of galvanizing electricity.
“He’s in room 655,” she utters ominously.
Then they hear the nurses whispering as they make their way down the long corridor. Words such as amputee, horrible, disfigured! stupid!, were being said in barely-concealed tones. Once there, they hesitated before the room’s door, which was kept closed, while many of the other doors were fully opened. Finally, they summon the courage to enter and find that their Jeff is sound asleep as they had expected him to be from the effects of the anesthesia and pain-killers. No, he is no longer the young, and handsome Jeff they had known. His entire jaw has been removed, and there are only blooddied bangages where it should have been. But despite it all, he is still Jeff, their beloved son and his sister’s brother. They also quickly notice two packs of Marlborro Cigarretes, his favorite brand, on the bedside table, the very things which had caused him the cancer that had led to the surgery. They summon the nurse and ask why.
“He said that he was going to smoke them through a slit he would make in the throat bandages as soon as he was healed enough to do it. We told him it was stupid, but he wrote on a pieceof paper that he had a right to smoke and wanted to have them ready as soon as he could go home.”
After frowning and shaking her head, with eyes lowered to the floor, the nurse leaves so they can talk to their son Jeff, the difigured jaw amputee, but they all silently follow her out and never return.