»
Main Forums
»
Passions in Prose
»
Waiting with Fear, Toast, and a Priest
| Passions in Prose |
|
Waiting with Fear, Toast, and a Priest |
|
|
patchoulipumpkin Member
since 2000-01-01
Posts 196Bermuda |
We all went to the hospital. Its what we had to do. I saw someone’s head was bleeding, and his wife was sitting stunned next to him. She looked like she was a painting of a human being, as if she had removed herself from her time, and left her image in its place. I took a seat next to a woman, who was crying out. “Where are the doctors, where are the doctors”. She wouldn’t stop. She didn’t stop. I wanted to ask her her name, so she would calm down, but when I leaned over, her eyes told me to get away from her. I was a dog, a shark, a predator. Not a human being. Her hair was all over the place, in her eyes, everywhere but on her head. “Have you seen a doctor”, she looked at me childlike. “NO”, I said. I was scared. It always happened when adults became kids again. It freaked me out, like they had forgotten who they were, and wanted to be taken care of by you. I turned my head, put it between my knees and waited. We all waited. Waiting for doctors. Waiting for something. I wasn’t really sure what I was waiting for. I guess I was waiting for a doctor, but I really didn’t know. So I just concentrated on waiting. A priest came by that didn’t know how to be a priest. He was as scared as the woman was, when he asked me if I was okay. I started to wonder where everybody had gone? It was like an evacuation of spirit, that had left these people, hollow, like mites climbing on a bedspread for a taste of skin. I told the priest I was fine, which wasn’t the answer he was expecting, so he got stuck. He didn’t know what to say next. But he had a bucket beside him. It was filled with cookies. “Do you want a cookie”, he asked. “Sure”. I took a cookie. He went up to the lady next to me, and asked her. Did she want a cookie?. “Father”, she screamed “Father”. I got scared again, he wasn’t her father, but the way she said it she wished it was. Maybe she even thought it was. “All I have is cookies”, he said. “Will you take one”, he asked her. She took a cookie too. I don’t know why. It was stupid. But I watched her eat her cookie, and got scared again. She was pushing it into her mouth with two hands, shovelling it like a kid does. All you could see were her terrified eyes, caught behind her spiked up hair, with the cookie taking up the bottom of her face. Her transformation was pretty much complete, her knees were tucked up, the cookie was there and her eyes were darting from side to side. I only wished she were an actress, so that it didn’t have to be so real. With all the waiting, I had assumed we were in a waiting room. Because everybody was waiting, or at least looked like they were doing something like waiting. You could tell who were waiting and who were just sitting though. Somebody’s kid was on the ground, and he was playing with his toys. Off in his own universe, waiting. His parents sat up from him and looked down in a kind way. They were waiting too. In all there were about a dozen people, 7 who were waiting, 5 who were sitting. The lady next to me was one of the one’s sitting, because her cookie had replaced doctors as her immediate concern. The lady who had become a painting, was sitting too. Her husband, well, he was injured, and not doing any sitting or waiting. He was hurt. There was blood coming from his temple, a little from his forehead, and he had a big white rag to his head. I tried to see his eyes, but his head was down, and it was sad, because he was alone, and she was alone. They were both sitting next to each other, but didn’t seem to know what to do. So they sat. There were some happier people though. An elderly couple in front of me were holding hands and smiling at me when I looked at them, with a tenderness and wisdom that only the elderly can have. It felt nice. And thought it wouldn’t be bad to be that old, you know. There was something nice about it. It was calm. Then someone walked past with an IV stand. The one with a bag of fluid at the top. This sort of scared me, because I always thought the bag looked like an organ that was see-through. My main worry was usually wondering what it was doing outside of someone’s body. And then I thought to myself, that I got scared a lot. There wasn’t much that I could take at face value, before my imagination warped it. At least the kid understood where I was coming from. When the IV rolled past, he pushed his way between his mum’s legs without even asking her what it was. I liked the kid. He knew it was an unappealing object, without even knowing its proper context. I smiled. The doctor’s came at various intervals, taking all the “sitting” people first. Because, well, they rushed towards them, and it wasn’t like we had numbers or anything. The lady next to me was the first to go. When she saw the doctor she screamed again, “Doctor. But this time her scream was much nicer. It wasn’t desperate like it was with the priest. This time it was more optimistic, exultant. The doctor could make her an adult again. I got a bit angry with her because she jumped up so fast. I felt that the elderly couple should go first, but when I looked at them to explain they should go first, they looked back at me, with their calm reserve once again and told me without words, that it was okay, their time would come. I felt nice again. Communicating with them was better than any of the sedatives the paramedics had given me. And I laughed to myself with the idea that I should ask these old people if they wanted to follow me around. Help me be calm like them. Right before it was my turn for the doctor, nurses were coming by with trays of toast. It was great. I must have eaten about five slices. And they were happy with their jobs, they smiled as I ate them all up, and I wanted to ask them for some coffee and orange juice, but thought I wouldn’t because they were smiling so much with their toast. And maybe, I thought to myself, the orange juice and coffee nurses would be following them anyway. Christ, maybe if I waited long enough I could get a whole breakfast here. I never found out though, because the doctor called me, and it was my turn. Just as I was walking into his room, I saw the priest again. This time I felt kind of sorry for him, because no one wanted any cookies anymore, now that the toast had come up. He was walking, scanning the “waiting” and “sitting”, looking for someone who would take a cookie. He asked me again if I wanted a cookie, but I was already pretty full from the toast so I told him “no thankyou” and explained to him what was happening with the toast and cookies. I told him that people seemed more interested in toast now, so he should try and get a toast tray, and trade in the cookies. Suddenly, he didn’t seem so nervous, and I think started feeling a bit more like a priest, because he thanked me really humbly, found a nurse with a tray of toasts, and took it over. I smiled. And he smiled back at me, in a more assured way than before, and didn’t look so worried. He had a new mission this time. One where he understood his role. I watched the priest speak to some people about toast, I looked down the hall where I saw a couple more toast trays, and a few sitters, and turned into the doctor’s rooms where I would find out if I was waiting for him, or waiting for its own sake. I really didn’t know, it all seemed too surreal to really be happening, so I needed a little poke to hopefully wake me up. If I was dreaming, it made sense- a priest with cookies and toast, nurses with trays of toast, people vacant in their own seats. It had rhythm to it, if it was a dream. If it wasn’t a dream, I would just have to make it something else. [This message has been edited by patchoulipumpkin (edited 01-21-2000).] |
||
| © Copyright 2000 patchoulipumpkin - All Rights Reserved | |||
|
Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
Wow! I got the ethreal feeling of being locked away in the waiting room of purgatory! The "feeling" of the scene all but took my breath away with the surrealistic realism...LOL, if you catch my drift! Well done on this one! "O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?" Dante Alighieri |
||
|
Skyfyre Senior Member
since 1999-08-15
Posts 1906Sitting in Michael's Lap |
The way that you wrote this with a sort of disjointed stream of consciousness perspective was very effective for your subject matter. Makes one look at emergency rooms in a brand new light, eh? What you did with the priest was my favorite -- so few are comfortable with the reality of human frailty, whether it be mental or physical ... and yet we all want to feel useful, even in as small a capacity as passing out toast ... Well done. --Kess Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange... --William Shakespeare, from The Tempest |
||
|
|
⇧ top of page ⇧ |
|
| All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format. | ||
