Waiting Rooms Shouldn’t Exist
Libraries are for reading.
Bedrooms are for sleeping.
Classrooms are for learning.
Waiting rooms ask people to sit still while the rest of their lives wait behind a closed door.
A routine allergy appointment could become a conversation about chemotherapy.
Forty minutes of rehearsing the worst could end with, “Everything looks fine.”
For an hour, two strangers could sit shoulder to shoulder, sharing the same silence, breathing the same recycled air, listening for the same door to open.
One walks out with ultrasound photos tucked into a bag.
Another walks out with a follow-up appointment and a folder that feels heavier than paper should.
Neither learns the other’s name.
Phones unlock over and over without a single message being absorbed.
The same paragraph is read until the words blur together.
A clipboard’s checked again.
Footsteps in the hallway pull all eyes to the door.
Name is called.
Chair empties.
Chatter resumes at the reception desk.
TV keeps talking.
Outside, traffic carries on.
The empty chair fills again.
— Autistic Ang
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You’ve captured the particular purgatory of waiting rooms so accurately here
I love this. I'm not a fan of waiting rooms...and I especially dislike waiting for anything or anyone...waiting is torture. I'm ready to scream my eyeballs out by the time the doctor walks in the exam room to begin the routine "How are you doing?" question session, and then the brief check up. Everything is fine. I try to schedule my appointments to be the first one of the day, so it's not hanging over my head until "whenever" later in the day that might as well be forever.