The Waiting Room

          It wasn’t even my coffee, it was just someone else’s sitting there in the waiting room, but I suddenly found myself mesmerized by the steam rising up and disappearing.  Perhaps I needed the distraction and that was my way of getting lost for a moment.  It was just a simple mental escape and I knew it, yet I could not pull my gaze away from the steam.   It was funny, I couldn’t smell coffee, but then again I couldn’t even hear the conversations that were going on around me.  I could hear faint murmurs and that was it.

 

          How could I be so aware of something yet still unable to snap myself out of it?  I wondered where the steam was going, disappearing like that.  Was it blending in with the air we were all breathing - giving us a dose of caffeine?  I don’t think so.  Some new people just came into the waiting room.  Without even looking up I can tell there are two of them.  They are a little more than middle age.  She is heading over to the clipboard to sign in, while he glances around for two chairs together.

 

          A hand reaches down and picks up the coffee cup.  My eyes follow it up to the face that gingerly sips at it and sets it back down.  My concentration is broken.   I look over at the newcomers that have chosen their seats.  He picks up a Field & Stream, while she still fills out the forms on the clipboard.   I think I will call them Wally and Sarah.

 

          I can hear a squeaky wheelchair making its way down the hall just outside the room.  I wonder if they are coming in here.  I glance around for a spot they might nestle into, but it is going to be tough.  I don’t remember the room being this full and I begin to wonder if I had been more lost in staring at that coffee than I realized.

 

          The clipboard woman, Sarah, seems done with filling things in.  She stands and walks back to the sliding window, where the woman behind the glass says something to her that I cannot hear.  Sarah turns and calls out to Wally, who sets the magazine down and walks over to her.  An inside door opens and they both go in.  I see the faces around the waiting room look up.  I am sure they are wondering why they get to just go right in and not have to sit here forever like…

 

          I look at my watch.  How long have I been here, anyway?  I want to stand, stretch my legs a bit, but I sure do not want to lose my seat, not with this crowd.  I guess the wheelchair person kept going.  I don’t hear it anymore and they never came in.  Maybe it wasn’t a wheelchair at all; maybe it was one of those hospital gurneys.   I look over at the Field & Stream lying on the table.  I can barely make out the words, Frog Noses.   That is odd…  Who could write an article about frog noses?  And why?

 

          Other people in the room must have noticed it too, for they are all murmuring about frog noses.  Maybe they are arguing, I can’t tell.  I want to giggle but someone across the room is giving me a very serious look, as if they are trying to warn me against giggling.   They are not talking to me but somehow I am getting the message that this is not a good situation.  I begin to think again about the steam from the coffee, rising up but it is different now.  I am rising up with it.  I am floating and rising like the steam from the coffee.  I smell it now.  The smell of fresh coffee is almost overwhelming.  I like the floating feeling, but why aren’t the others floating as well?

 

          I feel weightless, like I am drifting up from the coffee, swirling and turning around.  I can see the entire waiting room from here, but it does not seem to be a waiting room.  It looks more like an operating room.  Serious people standing around me, some lifting me onto a gurney, covering my body with the sheet.

 

          I can hear the squeaking wheels again.  I wonder where they are taking me.