Sitting in the ER waiting room, entry form on my knee, I started down the hypochondriac wish-list. Took me a while to decide—I got this, and this, but not that. It was a catalog of ailments, actually, but with many afflictions strangely missing. For example, a very personal, early one…circumcision…first loss of body part without my consent. Ha! And from there, more predictable losses like teeth and additions like eyeglasses and immunizations for measles and mumps. Not to mention the occasional ankle sprain and odd fracture.
Okay, all to be expected in the course of growing up, I guess. But then the check list referenced particular system issues like iron deficiency, surgeries, heart irregularities. So many things to get, and not get, to survive and work-around over the years.
A little guy across from me, snuggling in his mother’s arms, began to crab and fuss. ‘Welcome to the club kid,’ I thought, ‘it’s a long road of attrition ahead. Good thing you can’t read this inventory of things to come.’
I dropped my forms at the nurse’s station and scanned the room as I turned. There was a scrunched up teenage girl hiding behind a People magazine. An old man, older than me, I bet, clenching his jaw, hoping for another ‘stay’. A grey-haired woman tapping her foot, waiting for a verdict.
Reminded me of a visit to Ireland and a mountaintop shrine to St. Patrick. I was part of the crowd of petitioners bowing over rented hiking sticks, struggling up the rocky, rutted road in search of a cure, a fix…a reprieve.
Is this waiting room another shrine, I asked myself, another place to join vulnerability with hope for healing? Am I on a medical pilgrimage for a sustaining cure? Nah, no big thing, this time, just a minor repair.
But it is like I’m in a church, in a way, in a congregation of needy faithful enduring pain and worry, praying for the miracles of medicine and technology to heal, to restore. So, church… but with no specific beliefs, no hymns, no communion, just the commonality of shared need for care and fix.
Amen.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
