.. waiting ..

After stating my name at the reception desk I was handed a thin grey plastic card, complete with a hole in the top centre and the number 11 stencilled onto it. This grey card meant I was due to see Nurse 1 - who evidently didn't warrant an actual name on the board at the front of the waiting area. Currently number 10 was in there, so I, using something called maths, came to the conclusion, was next to go in.

The waiting room was like the inside of an oven on Mars on a particularly scorching day - and I don't just mean everything was covered in dust and oddly scattered debris. I'd only just sat down and, without realising it, had removed my jacket and the roll neck sweater I happened to be wearing (well, not after I'd taken it off). Why was it so hot? Was it because they get a lot of elderly people in there? Possibly. Though I wasn't going to find the answer to a question I didn't know the answer to by asking myself, was I? Still I did it.

I looked at the two ceiling fans above me. Why? Why have them? Just to taunt us? Well, me. The others don't look taunted. Maybe it's because the fans look good. To whom exactly? The visibly impaired? The people with ill eyes? The fans are there for one reason and one reason only and that reason is the exact reason that doesn't seem to be getting noticed. How unreasonable.

Some of the other patients shifted uncomfortably in the seats, which were a mixture of red and blue (not the patients, the chairs) but not in any particular pattern. It wasn't red, blue, red, blue or red, red, blue, blue, red, red, red or even red, red, blue, red, red, blue. There was no pattern whatsoever. This, for some unknown reason annoyed me more than the motionless fans. The people occupying these seats sat looking through old issues of The Caravan Club Magazine. Best and Heat. Do surgeries just phone magazine office's to specifically request back issues, nothing new? I'm sure the tax I pay could at least afford an old issue of a magazine I actually bloody like.

A bald man ahead of me sat reading Chat. He sat in a red seat just like me - not the same one you understand. Both part of a total non-pattern. The music being played would every now and then become evident, abusing my ears with a mixture of jazz and classical style renditions of well known, but not necessarily well liked, songs. Songs like Singing in the Rain.

The light on the board eventually signalled that I should go in and I could feel the other patients' annoyance bouncing at my back as I slipped the grey plastic onto the Number 10 that was hanging with the other grey numbers. Heading towards the room of Nurse 1, a young girl ran, well waddled, past me. She was then followed by, I assume, her mother who was helping her grandmother walk down the narrow corridor. I stepped aside to let them by and didn't receive the praise I hadn't wanted in the first place.

I entered the Nurses' room and she immediately said Richard Evans? I confirmed that I was and, for some reason, wish I knew her name so I could say that aloud. I couldn't very well blurt out Nurse 1, could I? She then asked if I'd ever had a blood test before. She looked indifferent when I told her I couldn't remember. What did it matter? Did this mean I was an amateur? Out of my depth?

I was then instructed to sit in the chair by the wall. A small, blue leather coated thing. It was as uncomfortable as the ones in the waiting room. However, as there was only one of them, the room did at least have some sort of chair pattern. After getting me to uncover my arm, I watched her stick the needle into me. I felt nothing. She then informed me that she was going to take several different amounts and within the next few minutes she had unscrewed bits and pieces and was stealing more and more of my blood. I stared at the syringe as it filled and begin thinking, that's me in there! You have part of me in your fucking syringe! Give me back, now.

Then I was told to hold cotton wool on the small prick on the fold of my arm for a while. She then began tapping stuff into a computer. I tried to get a sneaky peek but didn't want to make it too obvious so only made slight cranks with my neck. But nothing. Maybe she was just surfing the net, checking her email or completing an online nursing course. Whatever the case, she soon stopped and turned to me. She didn't look in the best of moods when I had entered (you have no new messages?) but now she looked even grumpier (you still have no new messages?). She hastily slapped a circular plaster on my arm and indicated that that was it by just looking at me. She waited until I got the hint and I headed out of the door, the sound of her voice not echoing in my ears as I left.

I jammed my finger in the door on my way back to the waiting room. The first bit of pain I'd felt so far that day. It hurt so much because it was so unexpected. Bastard thing. As I walked through the waiting room, which I'm sure looked like I was gloating 'I've been seen. Da da da I've been seen', to reach the exit, I passed the bald headed man who was now sat with his hands on his face, the copy of Chat on the seat beside him (that seat was also red, see what I mean?). Other than him, the only person left was an elderly lady who had a mixture of grey and white curly hair - not in a bag or anything - on her head. She shifted awkwardly in her seat. Piles? No. I had seen her before watching people who had arrived later than, but getting seen before, her with disgust and annoyance. Almost as if praying they were about to enter the room to fatal or devastating news. As I went to leave, a man who I for some reason cannot put an age to, hobbled in and sat next to the bald man. He looked at him and offered up his wisdom;

That's what life is. Moving from one chair to another.

.. back ..