Five Inches of Fiction

In the Waiting Room

Waiting. . . Waiting. I feel like I am always waiting.  Of course, that’s exactly what I was supposed to be doing at this particular time.  This was the Waiting Room.  How aptly named this tiny room was.  I wondered who had come up with the obvious name for what this room was all about. Waiting.

Waiting for news to arrive; whether that be bad news or good.  Waiting for the doctor to arrive–in which case, I may be waiting indefinitely.  Waiting to find out exactly how much my life would change after this particular stint of waiting was over.  Waiting to find out something important about myself; can I go on if the worst happens; can I make the right decisions when the time comes.  Waiting to find out what my reaction will be when the waiting ends and I must act.  I can imagine it a thousand times, playing the conversation out in my mind: what the doctor will say and what I will do.  But I will have to wait and find out when and if the time ever does arrive.  That’s the worst of the waiting.  I want this waiting to be over; I want to know and move on, but I dread the ending.

Perhaps the name should be changed to the Purgatory Room because that’s what this room feels like.  All of us who are here waiting are suspended in time.  Suspended until we find out if we will move on to heaven–the happiness of taking our loved one home no matter what the future may hold.  That we may be granted more time; something that is our enemy now: time.  During this “more time,” we will move on to another sort of waiting, waiting for the next shoe to fall.  Or will we move on to the hell of grieving and unwillingly letting go and trying to find that most irritating of terms, “a new normal?”

And then the doctor comes.

And the news is told.

And I am no longer waiting. . .