Waiting Game

Word count: 998 words

That smell that you get in a doctors’ surgery, even in the waiting room, can be described in no other way than medical. It’s like breathing in those plastic disposable gloves laced with chemicals and cleaning disinfectants. It makes me want to gag. It also makes me impatient. As does the fact that everyone is always sicker than I am. Sitting there, perched on the edge of my seat, impatiently awaiting my call to go up for my routine check-up, I always feel as though I’m going to catch some gross disease far worse than my current ailment. Receptionists are rarely the happiest people either. At about two o’clock I strode over to the reception lady to announce my appointment at exactly five past two. She grumpily took my name and date of birth, informed me I would be called in approximately five minutes and motioned to a nearby chair. All done without ever once looking up at me from her computer screen.

Also, it is now 2.43pm, and I am still waiting for my appointment.

The worst thing? I am certain that people arriving after me have gone in for their check-ups and left whilst I have been sitting here.
You know what else aggravates me? The half-hearted way they try to ‘decorate’ the waiting area, as though staring at a potted plant or reading a three year old magazine called ‘Home and Country’ is going to make my wait any less irritating. And why are the walls always beige? Every surgery I have been inside is painted beige! Why beige, of all the colours on the spectrum, why choose the most boring one? At least make it puke-green to match the customers….

Along with wailing babies and old people hacking up all the fluid in their clogged up lungs, it is safe to say that I am not a fan of going to the doctors.

So I’m sitting in the corner seat, wedged up against those beige walls in a feeble attempt to keep as far away from the sick folk as possible when suddenly a piercing scream echoes around the room. Patients jump out of their sick stupors and look towards the door for the source of the distressed sound. Nobody moves. It’s like we’re all on tenterhooks waiting for the movie at the theatre to begin. Even I snap out of my boredom long enough to glance around.

The brown surgery doors fly open, thumping against the walls noisily.

“HELP ME!”

People of all ages are leaping from their hard chairs, or are hauling themselves to their slippered feet in the case of the elderly people, to go and rush to the aid of the owner of the owl-like screech. There are so many people standing around the door that from my position in the far corner I cannot see her, I can only hear the commotion. The woman is screaming, her pleas and cries urgent; the responding footfalls of the waiting patients running to help; the shuffling of the elderly in their slippers; and the cool, calm voice of the grumpy receptionist telling the screaming woman to calm down.

Responding to her screams (and, admittedly, I am curious), I struggle to get through the small crowd and stand on tip-toes to get a look.

Blood.

So much blood.

It pools in her hands as the distressed lady tries to put pressure on her stomach. Her once-white blouse is now a tie-dye red, her hair matted to her face with sweat. Tears run down her face.

“Help me…” Her voice is more faint now and then, with a final look at her bleeding abdomen, the woman falls to a bloody heap on the tiles of the doctors’ surgery.

As though suddenly awoken from a dream, the crowd look around at one another, and then there is a flurry of crazed activity. Nobody knows what to do. People are shouting things at one another, suggestions are flying around, but though everybody is moving, nobody is doing anything.

The receptionist races out of the room looking petrified, while some brave soul finally rips off his t-shirt, kneels beside the bleeding woman and presses the garment to her wound, murmuring unheard words into her ear and smoothing her hair back from her face. The panic in the room is overwhelming, even I am beginning to feel it. Shifting my weight uncomfortably between my feet, I wonder if I should do anything. I look around me. People are trundling around, some are grabbing tissues, others bottles of water, all of us are wondering whether a doctor will even come, when I realise that that is what I should do. Go and get a doctor.

I am just about to run into the main surgery when the double doors are thrown open and a middle-aged doctor with graying hair and a white lab coat strides over. The crowd parts with no need for even a flourish of his hand, and he kneels beside the woman.

“She will be okay, don’t panic,” he tells us calmly.

But I am not so sure, and neither is anyone else. The blood is still pooling on the floor around her, crimson-red, and she is still unconscious. The man with no t-shirt is still next to her, putting pressure on her wound.

“Does anyone know what the date is?”

The question surprises us. I look at the doctor – has he gone mad? A dying woman, and he’s asking for the date?

“April the first!” shouts a man from the crowd.

“That’s right, April the first…” replies the doctor, seemingly satisfied. He stands up, and steps away, leaving us shocked.

He’s going to let her die!

When, quite abruptly, the dying woman begins to laugh.

“What the…?”

And then she lifts herself up until she awkwardly stands up, shaking away the loaned t-shirt. We all stare at her.

“Happy April Fools!” she shouts with laughter, and walks out through the door as though nothing happened.