Waiting Rooms.

I met a woman at a party on Sunday who wore a green sweater and a green scarf. She had long, wavy hair. We were at a “naked lady party” which isn’t quite as kinky as it sounds but not a sort of party I’d heard about before Portland. Everyone heard from a friend of a friend and brought a bag of clothes they did not want anymore, and realized, upon arrival, that they knew hardly anyone else there. So here we were, in a situation that has become all too familiar since this whole thing started (gatherings with lots of strangers) trying on each other’s clothes. Creating new piles and then bringing them home without any expectation of seeing the former wearer again.

But back to the woman in the sweater. She, by the way, brought the best clothes. The most clothes. A large variety of J Crew sweaters. She did not hold a glass of red wine in her hand, because she is now expecting. (Which she found out a month ago, and is just now feeling the sicknesses from it.) But even though her stomach revealed nothing I could see the joy in the way she talked about it. The need to find a midwife. The bathtub her husband built in the attic for the birth. Family names. Maternity clothes. The excitement of a new life that she will have so much to do with. It was refreshing, and strange, to hear so immersed in thought about a subject that has hardly crossed my mind.

But the week went on afterwards. I made my morning rounds and called 911 after opening the door on the seventh floor. No, I could not see sharp objects, I told the man on the other end of the line, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any. I printed off the patient’s information and handed it to the paramedics, my hands still shaking a bit when the papers transferred from my hold to theirs’. I watched them go up the elevator in their blue uniforms and then went back to the office, grabbed the basket of granola bars, and knocked on the rest of the doors. I labeled more post-its for patient appointments and stuck them to the large white board we have in the office.

Later on that day, I stopped at the food court Providence Hospital while waiting for another client to get out of his appointment. I ate the apple I’d brought from home and looked around at the people eating French fries and drinking diet soda through straws. There was a gift shop on the right and soft rock playing in the background. It reminded me of when my mom would take me to Children’s hospital in Boston for the check up on bone cyst on my index finger, or when my Dad and I stopped at Finagle a Bagel on the way back from getting the mole on my head removed. I must have known then that all of that was love—the hours my parents took out of their day, the choice junk food item, the drive through the city, the hour or two of school I missed. But now I know for sure. Maybe that’s one of the most beautiful things they did for me, buying me a bagel with cream cheese when I wasn’t sure what the mole meant, or sitting beside me in a waiting room of strangers. I guess that’s how I ended up here. I had someone to knock on my in the morning, drive me to my appointments. And someone to call the right person if things were to go wrong.

(Written 11/24/2009)