The woman with one breast is friendly
She jokes about feeling lighter
We nod grimly
Gallows humor
Palpable energy shift from 20 year old gamer wearing graffiti hi-tops, and 60 year old with deflation in her eyes
The ravage of time and effect, painted on women of different shapes, scars like badges of honor except when they’re not
The old lady is marked by a blue gown to our uniform pink
She exudes weariment without lifting her head from its downcast slump
Her limbs look like they have been pickled and left in hot Texan sun
She has an old ring on her wedding finger
I want to say something
But the lump in my throat and her shuttered aspect stay my hand
Instead I nod to the New Yorker and tell her there’s a free seat
Nobody really wants to sit
They want to run
Be anywhere else
Anyone else
“I miss the days they just told you that you could go“
Says the tall woman with a burgundy hair band
The woman cooked in black garb might belong to a cult
She had an accent and glowers
She says she drove from Eagle Pass because they don’t have good medicine there
Simmering rage in her balled lacquered fists
The hiss of some impossibly expensive machine out of sight
everyone meets eyes over masks, the unsaid being
Is this good medicine?
We play occidental musical chairs
The magazines are gone because of the virus, we hide our faces behind our fabric hoping for modesty that has long fled
Nurses walk their daily steps in the shiny lino corridor, their hair gleams like peacock feathers, they are harried but kind eyed
I get a young woman tech who has quiet jazz
She talks of wanting children. Her brother is sterile. She’s afraid to get tested.
I urge her to try. Thinking of how not long ago I stood in her slightly less comfortable shoes
Imaging a future
How they unfurl and then dry up and close, ready for the rush hour drive back
Mascara lines running like train tracks on masks of horror
A scrawny woman with platinum hair asked me how to do something on her phone
etiquette is said to save us
Not in the time of Covid, I think
A high school had blossomed in the pit of the waiting room
Some have been here two hours
They divide solemnly into temporary allegiances
Some like the loud mouth
Others roll at the waiting and click their dry tongues
It reminds me of paper flowers put in water
Her grandchildren are visiting. The mute girl in the corner looks young enough to be one
I ache for her fledgling fear
Knowing
None of us are safe
From the words
“Come and discuss your findings with the specialist“
TheFeatheredSleep 