The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room
The April weather shifted high to low,
Exposing those early clout casters
To the concluding bite of winter;
Footsteps full of foreboding
Trudge their last legs up the inclined driveway
To the Doctor’s old house.
A hotchpotch of chairs and wooden benches
Cling to the borders of the waiting room
A ballroom of romance for the sick.
In varying degrees of ill-health
A gamut of the townspeople
Chorus a cacophony of coughs
Sniffling and wheezing feverishly,
While the readers’ digest stale stories
From the well-thumbed publications.
Eyes darting around the room
Surveying the afflicted to kill the time
Conjecture at the probable cause and severity;
Childlike comparisons to ones’ own condition.
A new mother fails to stifle a yawn
Spreading contagion to the assembled
Her flushed snoozing baby
Unaware of her blaming chatter.
Life-weary pensioner invited to the inner sanctum
Chilled to the bone, sciatica stricken,
Accepts the decree of the medic
Without question or comment.
His framed degree, long faded,
Enough to stifle her to silence
His stethoscope, as a Priests garb
To her, underpinning his status.
Two codgers still await their summons
More regularly neighbours at the bar
Boisterously chatting across the room
For the oblivious benefit of the throng;
Socialising symptoms best supressed
Public bravado before their private hearing,
Selective honesty, the order of the day.
Quiet couple with obviously hidden issue
Whisper conspiratorially in the half lit room
Embracing the background murmur
And the dimness, aid to their privacy.
Vice-Captain of the junior team,
Fit, and embarrassed at his minor disorder
Conjures up exaggerated “near death” vocabulary
For future reportage to the team
His shame cajoled into the ether
By his twisting of the physicians’ imagined words.
And all the while the waiting room remains
Constant, a silent witness to all ills.
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