Amy & Mike share a laugh
The first hour wasn’t so bad. I thumbed through magazines and caught up on Katy Perry’s feud with Taylor Swift. Then I scanned emails on my phone while trying to ignore the television’s programmed medical show about preventative care for certain anatomical organs.
By the second hour, I was growing irritated. I had work to do, calls to make, errands to run. A few people were called into the inner sanctum to see the doctor, but none came back out, like the first season of “Stranger Things.”
My fellow patients were losing their patience, too.
“I guess this is why they call it ‘a waiting room,’” said an older man sitting next to me.
Everyone nodded, unified in our discontent. Others chimed in, sharing how long they had been waiting. One woman suggested we approach en masse the reception office assistant and demand answers. Vive la revolution!
Just as I was ready to storm the office fortress, I glanced at my cell phone. A text from a friend said she had sad news. A mutual friend’s husband had died unexpectedly. Then I received a social media alert that one of my favorite writers lost her 57-year-old partner to cancer.
I looked up. Most of my waiting room revolutionaries were older and alone.
Across the room was a frail, silver-haired woman staring out the window. I hadn’t noticed her earlier. She and her late husband had owned a local business that is now run by her son. For over 50 years, she scheduled appointments while her husband managed the rest. They did everything together. Often, I’d see them at lunch sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the same side of the booth at the pizza place across the street from their shop.
The man sitting on my left told me he’d lost his wife last summer. Evenings are the hardest, he said. His children and grandchildren live up north. They want him to move closer, but this is home he said to me before quickly looking away, mindful that maybe he said too much to a stranger.
Then I looked at the man to my right. Dignified with handsome features and a thick head of wavy gray hair, he was wearing a nicely pressed button-down shirt tucked into jeans. This man I know well. He is my husband. We don’t normally go to doctor’s appointments together, but I was having a minor procedure that required someone to drive me home. As the hours went by, I encouraged Mike to leave. I’d call him when I was ready. No sense in both of us stuck in the waiting room with a TV medical show — the background music consisting of a ukulele and cymbal.
“Nope, I’m staying,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Maybe we can get everybody to join in singing to the ukulele.”
Mike added his own song verse that rhymed with those certain anatomical organs featured on the TV. We started laughing, unable to stop, then crying, punchy from our marathon in a doctor’s office with a cheery healthcare musical.
Finally regaining a semblance of composure, I took a deep breath. I placed my cell phone in my purse and focused on my husband the comic. We talked about our schedule for the rest of the day, what to make for dinner that night, plans for the weekend. Nothing serious, but it sure beat reading about the Kardashians and fretting over missing time from work, calls, and errands.
I’m pretty sure the man sitting to my left and the frail, silver-haired woman across the room and my friend who just lost her husband would give anything for a few more minutes of everyday conversation with their loved ones. One day, one of us won’t be here — Mike and me — leaving the other to wait alone for appointments.
Shoulder-to-shoulder we sat beside each other and talked and waited. When the nurse called my name, I looked at Mike.
“I’ll be right here,” he said.
Four words that we can never take for granted.
