Act One: 11:09
I have red hair. The only one here who does. I am sure it makes everyone notice me. I just want to disappear. Everyone here is pissed off, scowling and muttering to themselves as soon as I arrive. Why are they not more grateful? Is that a ridiculous thought? Should, could one be grateful for being here? I keep forgetting to breathe. From the row beside me a mother and her baby are seated. She holds a cuddly toy up to his face and squeezes it. It plays a musicbox jingle. What is that tune? I recognise it. Oh yes, that’s it. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’. How appropriate. I could go. One hour wait. An hour. An hour. A one hour tour. At least. Names with lots of Ks in them are being called out. I am sitting in a sea of lots of old and sick and angry looking people. Do they have no patience or are they beyond patience? I shouldn’t be here. I stick out like a sore thumb with my red hair. ‘They’re running an hour late’, says one man to another, ‘but it’s warmer than where I live.’ Now I lay me down to sleep. The baby has more patience than anyone here. I almost didn’t make it here. A swill of mismatching myths clog together in my head - an Odyssey through the labyrinth of this place just to find my own little fated corner of the underwold; so hard to find my sick and unwanted eurydice at the appointed time, yet with no Orpheus of my own to come for me. He forgot. I am alone in this busy room of coughers, chokers and shufflers, alone because I am the only one with red hair. Alone and afraid. I keep forgetting to breathe, in this fretful sea of impatients. Why is surgery such a scary word? This one isn’t the threat - not just the smell of the antiseptic and the absence of more than one colour. This is the real deal. This is where people get cut, here lumps of flesh get pulled out. The same cast of coughers suspended between the two realities. Now I lay me down to sleep. The baby is taught to clap its hands by a stranger. ‘I’m not very entertaining, darling’ the stranger says to the baby when it doesn’t. Now I lay me down to sleep. Now I lay me down to sleep. Suddenly I realise that’s not the tune at all. Suddenly I realise my brain is just putting words to a different tune, hearing something that isn’t actually there. The tune is actually Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. Much more innocent. Much less morbid. The stranger with the woman and the baby gets up when the nurse calls the name Frederick and insists that she called out for Patricia. How do they even sound the same? Unable to answer she returns to her seat. The nurse talks about blood and my toes curl in my shoes. The bearded Scot behind the stranger who isn’t Frederick grumbles into his beard. ‘We’ll be next,’ his wife says. The baby begins to cry about a star it cannot see, no longer laid to sleep.
Act Two: 11:58
‘You will all be seen,’ the nurse says. ‘There are people with the doctors now. They have many problems. They have personal problems.’ Patricia Frederick gives the kind nurse a disgusted look and goes and stands next to the receptionist who doesn’t seem to like her either. People seem to be getting angry. No patience here in this busy waiting room. Scot grumbles again. His wife ignores him this time and talks to the baby. His name is Stephen I now learn. I am finding things out about people, in patience, breathless. Breathless. I haven’t taken a breath for… a long time. I gasp and scare the stoic silent man seated next to me, white wirey hair on wax brown skin. I look down, embarrassed. I am the only one here with red hair. When I look up, Stephen and his mother have gone. ‘You don’t sleep the night before, worrying,’ Patricia Frederick says, before telling the totally indifferent receptionist that she’ll wait till half past. ‘Okay,’ the receptionist replies, and Patricia takes a different seat on the other side of Purgatory. I wish Stephen and his mother were still here. Now I lay me… Twinkle Twinkle… I am alone. I am afraid. Time ticks on and on without a sound as I sit in silent patience amongst grumbling patients. ‘As I said five minutes ago, you’ll all be seen,’ the nurse reassures once more. Scot adds another string of dusty vitriol to his beard. ‘You could always pretend to be someone else,’ an attractive young blonde offers helpfully, from next to where Stephen had sat on his mother’s knee. Empty spaces. Spaces filled. Spaced emptied. Spaces filled. A waiting room. A waiting room. They fascinate and horrify. They are between heaven and hell and outside the laws of time. Now I lay… twinkle… Suddenly everyone starts talking, grumbling, mumbling and chattering at once. A pair of headphones adds a pinch of tin clashes to the air. The breathless rock in my stomach makes me sleepy, and my patience gives in to rest. No clock. Not a tick. Nothing to count the march of life through fear, patience and solitude. Nothing to remind me to breathe.
Act Three: 12:30
Scot gets called. HIs name’s Marshall. An angry young Irishman walks past him like a punchline as he leaves the waiting room and starts to shout at the receptionist. She asks him not to shout at her. He leaves. The woman behind him then checks in with the receptionist. The receptionist tells her she’s in the wrong place. The woman says she was sent here from downstairs and has already been all over the hospital. The receptionist says she’s sorry about that, but there’s nothing she can do for her here. She repeats that the woman is in the wrong place. The woman shouts at her too. The receptionist asks her not to shout at her. The woman goes away, and the receptionist checks her hotmail. An old woman who hasn’t said anything yet says she’s getting too old for all this hanging about. ‘Why?’ I want to ask her, ‘what else is it you have to do right now? Do you have a business lunch you’re in danger of missing?’ Why are people so impatient? I notice Stephen and his mother haven’t left yet, merely changed their seats. A little spice of variety in an otherwise bland and long cooled soup. The Stoic Man next to me gets up and starts walking around. The receptionist gives him a kind smile and says he will definitely be seen next. A few people roll their eyes, tut and huff at this, apparently because they arrived before him and thus think they should get seen first. He smiles back at her and returns thoughtfully to his seat, keeping very still as before. He is indeed the next one seen. ‘What am I doing?’ the receptionist mutters to herself as she types something into the database and makes a mistake. ‘I’m going to kill someone one day.’ ‘You’ll all be seen,’ the nurse says again as she walks past. ‘When? Christmas?’ shouts a badly bleached blonde who’s been talking loudly into her mobile for the past few minutes. The vulgar decorations all around the waiting room suggest the irony of her statement is slightly lost on her. She is something straight out of Footballers’ Wives. ‘You said that an hour ago.’ The nurse leaves. ‘She comes out here,’ the woman continued muttering to anyone who would listen, ‘and says any old thing and thinks we’re idiots.’ ‘You are an idiot,’ I can’t help but think, ‘and the worst kind of human - impatient and ignorant and rude with it. You’ve just surrendered any sympathy I could have for you.’ Undeservedly perhaps, she is the next one called, and leaves in a thankless fug of vitriol and cheap perfume. More grumbling from the patients. More changing of seats. Stephen sleeps blissfully through it all.
Act Four: 13:08
I am seen. It takes five minutes. Exactly two hours and five minutes to be told I need to make another appointment. He tells me it’s a very simple procedure, and he will be administering it himself. Is that a look of pride in his eyes? Is this how it’s always happened - that torturers, executioners and saviours alike would meet their causes before the fateful day and look them in the eye? I looked at his hands and imagined them tinkering around inside of me. He told me of the risks involved. 1 in 1000 chance of something going wrong. I prefer my safety margin to have more zeros in it. At the moment I have more chance of this procedure going wrong than I do of winning the National Lottery jackpot. That can’t be right, surely? He seems nice. I listen and try and understand why I had to wait so long for such a little conversation as he talks. Paranoia grips me as I wonder if he really has read my notes - he didn’t know about the details of my family history. I’m told to go back to the waiting room and sit and wait again for the appointment to be made. Stephen and his mother are gone. Patricia Frederick and Scot Marshall have not returned, nor has the footballer’s wife, no doubt ordering her third Bacardi in a Belgravia wine bar by now, and chewing wasps into her mobile to anyone who’ll listen between the gulps. I sit in the attractive blonde woman’s empty chair as I watch the receptionist go off-shift, and then stare at a wanky little Christmas tree tucked away like an embarrassment in the corner. I then see a poster on a nearby pillar: Living with Cancer is Expensive. Time is the most valuable commodity any of us ever have. Wait now, pay later. Suddenly I feel sick. I just want to go home.
Act Five: 13:32
I am the last of the morning appointments left by the time she calls my name. The waiting room is starting to fill up again with the afternoon list patients. I pass a clock as she leads me through the now almost abandoned department, and smile at it as if it were a long lost friend. It looks back at me blankly, its only reply an indifferent “13:32.” I am out of time - a morning patient in the afternoon. Time only exists outside the waiting room, and when you finally leave it you could end up anywhen. I ask her how her day has been and she is happy to tell me. I like this lady. she isn’t afraid to see me as a person. You’d be amazed how few people in hospitals want to see you as a person - don’t want to look beyond your case notes. She tells me that compared to the amount of time people had to wait on the last weekday before Christmas last year this is tranquility. We talk about the procedure, and I want to go home more than ever. I want to say “I’m sorry, I made it all up, none of it’s true. You got me.” But of course, it isn’t, and I can’t. She says the earliest appointment is in March. A three month wait. Again. Oddly enough I think this is fine. When I think about why, I find out that my brain just doesn’t want to deal with this anymore. Three more months of blissful ignorance and just assuming it’s all going to be fine anyway is perfect. She asks if I have any questions and I ask her if it’s too late to change my mind. She smiles and says no, it isn’t. She asks if I have any other questions, so I look through my form and immediately ask her why my clinic is consistently incapable of getting my address right. We go through my details together and change them straight onto the database. I find this gives me an odd sense of calmness. Putting things into order always makes me calm. I wish her good luck dealing with the backlog and a happy Christmas. She gives me a smile that made me feel something I suddenly didn’t want to feel because I wanted to go home, and we say goodbye.
I give my form to the new receptionist. I don’t know anyone in this waiting room anymore. She smiles at me and half talks to herself, asking the form if it needs to go to the day clinic downstairs. No, she finally says, that’s all fine. Thank you. ‘I can go home now?’ I ask, more feebly than I meant to. ‘You go get yourself a nice cup of tea,’ she said, and smiles again. I don’t know why, but I suddenly want to cry. I gave her a quick thankyouverymuch and wished her a happy Christmas, hurrying out of the department and into the lift before anyone could see me and reduce my life to five minute chatter and gossip.
None of it seems quite so real now. I tapped out most of the above on my mobile phone in the waiting room, because I didn’t have a pen and notebook with me. There was a section I couldn’t save because I received an unexpected text message and ran out of memory. I tried to rewrite it as best as I could remember - but you never really get it quite right, do you? I didn’t feel like going shopping after I left the hospital so I came home. I’ve been here ever since. It feels like I’ve been back a lot longer than three hours.
