Waiting Room Woes

It took me a while to find the right waiting room in the hospital.

Me: Can you please tell me where the waiting room for nuclear multi-syllable chromosomal stratospheric endocrinal-catheterization is?

Random person wearing a white coat in the hospital: Follow the green line

Me: Which one?

Random person: The one on the floor

After following the green line for 45 minutes I ended up at a garbage dump full of green bins with a big sign on them: “Danger: Radiologic Biologic Morphologic Recycling.” I somehow figured that my friend, who just had a multi-syllabic procedure wasn’t there.

Me: Can you please tell me how to get to the information desk?

Different random person wearing a stethoscope around his neck and carrying a 2 gallon coke bottle in his pocket: Follow the red line

Me: The one on the floor?

Same different random person, now drinking from 2 gallon coke bottle, drooling all over his stethoscope: Of course moron!

After following the red line for 90 minutes I arrived at the information desk, of Macy’s. At that point I discovered that I was color blind, but a nice lady guided me back to the hospital. I eventually found the department of nuclear multi-syllable chromosomal stratospheric endocrinal-catheterization.

Me: Can you please tell me where I can find Isaiah Franklin, my friend, who just had a gastro morphologic orchiectomy?

Nurse carrying a 3 gallon coke bottle: He is doing well but we also had to perform a myringotomy and a diverticulectomy abdominoplasty because he was constipated. He is in room 323. Just follow the yellow line.

Me: I’m sorry, I’m color blind.

Nurse: Second door on the right

Me: Can you also point me to the restroom?

Nurse: Just follow the smell.

Relieved that I had found my way back to the waiting room, I sat in the small room, turned off the annoying TV, which usually advertises discounted gonadectomies, and turned on my kindle for some quiet time. No sooner did I start reading than three incredibly loud women, each one the size of a small Toyota, sat next to me, talking in Spanish, in detail, about their father’s scrotoplasty. To add insult to injury they turned on the TV and started watching La Rosa de Guadalupe in Univision. I pretended I did not speak Spanish to avoid unsolicited conversation about scrotoplasties or Fidel Castro, but I could not help being distracted by the Telenovela. A very big woman was trying to rescue a very young woman from what looked like a very bad pimp. She succeeded but only temporarily. As soon as the very big lady drove away with the very young lady, the very bad pimp telephoned another pimp who brought 98 other pimps to the rescue house, where it seemed like very young girls were rehabilitating themselves from a life of very bad things. The 99 pimps came with very big guns to the house and then there was a very long commercial break advertising Dos Equis beer and all kind of random nonsense with semi-nude women hugging Camaros and the Mexican soccer team selling tortillas.

To distract myself I fantasized: What if I pressed the emergency button by the stretcher next to me? What if I responded to a Code Blue and showed up at the emergency room before the real doctors? (I have only a PhD, which in Jewish families is as good as a high school diploma). What if I walked into one of the rooms and conducted a diverticulectomy abdominoplasty on some random patient? Any of these options would have been better than suffering all the scrotoplasty talk, but my superego took over and I resigned myself to watching La Rosa de Guadalupe. 

As I was getting into La Rosa de Guadalupe the phone of the Nissan next to me started ringing uncontrollably. The phone owner, who was describing in gruesome detail the scrotoplasty to her mother and sister, could not be bothered to answer. The conversation got even louder when the Spanish speaking nurse offered us in the waiting room some Jell-O, which I would never touch because it must have colorant, sugar, and 2987 different kinds of germs. As they swallowed the green Jell-O, my companions asked the nurse how their relative was doing. Displaying great surgical erudition, the nurse went on and on for 45 minutes describing more body parts than you would ever learn in a whole season of Grey’s anatomy. At that point I wanted to have a morphologic orchiectomy myself. Alternatively, I would have swum to Guantanamo for some quiet time.