The real emergency room is nothing like Grey’s Anatomy. In fact, it is disconcertingly hard to tell what’s wrong with the folks in the waiting area. There is certainly no one with a pole through their midsection.
The doctors do not look good in their scrubs. The lighting is not friendly. Everything is sort of languid and miserable. I watch closely for doctors running beside a gurney yelling instructions at each other while simultaneously discussing their love lives but am greatly disappointed. There is also no music playing to indicate whether I should be feeling sad, or scared or wacky and silly. There are just a lot of people staring dismally into space or speaking quietly on cell phones explaining to various co-workers and family members what is going on. Why they are stuck in a weird-smelling, earth-toned purgatory instead of going about Business as Usual.
I get so bored that I start inventing horrible, impossible scenarios about the gash in my boyfriend’s forearm. Maybe a nervous intern hit an artery while she was trying to stitch it up. And then they paged the chief of surgery who was trying to get his wife to forgive him for having an affair, and he said “I’ll be right back,” and she said “Don’t you walk out on me right now, Richard” and he said “I have to go!” and then they cut to a commercial.
I know that this is probably not the case. Michael is probably just sitting back there, waiting while the doctors attend to those in more immediate danger. He is thinking about the huge armoire with the glass doors that tipped as he was moving it, and about all the things he should be doing right now instead of sitting in the emergency room, and he is cursing his own stupidity–something I hate him to do because he does it with such vehemence.
A mother with two young boys in a double stroller settles wearily into the chair next to me. I look at her, then at the younger boy and then at the older boy and once again I try to figure out what is wrong with whom, but cannot. I’m guessing it is not the older boy, who looks to be about five, because he–unlike his mother–is in high spirits. Sensing this imbalance in mood, his eyes light up and he begins to sing her “Happy Birthday.” When he finishes, he starts again. His younger brother thrashes sportingly in his seat. As the boy launches into a third round, one side of his mother’s mouth grudgingly lifts into a half-smile.
“Is it your birthday?” I ask during the fourth round.
“No,” she says. The other corner lifts.
Michael comes out. I grab my purse and pop out of my seat as if spring-loaded, ready to gather him in my arms and restore him with my love. Then he tells me that he hasn’t even been seen yet. I deflate. My beloved further volunteers that the nurse told him not to come back and talk to me because he might miss the doctor. I plop back into my seat and tell him to get his ass back there. If he misses the doctor I’ll kill him
