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[ 7 minute read ]

Guilt and confusion

My local hospital is an University hospital. There is never the same staff at reception and never the same people not doing things and never the same doctors, if they are doctors. The patients are all strangers to me except they are obvious in their sameness; dull.

As I enter the main waiting room; the one where we actually have to wait, I am entering a waxworks museum of people. Silently seated and movement reduced to thumbs flicking across phone screens, they appear to be disengaged. But they are not; by flicking through a few templates to overlay the scene I find that the one with cows in a field with an overcast sky matches these people the best. Like cows, the bored patients playing with their phones are chewing their cud.

     ‘Mr Mundane’, called the young woman for the next check of someone's eyes.

Sometimes, I hope that a snake might run in and hold us at bay for a while until the snake-wrangler arrives with a hooked stick. Yet, in the eye clinic, there is almost never a young person who lacking experience might be flighty or irrational in the face of potential agonising death. For such a person, Russian Roulette played with a loaded snake would be obviously tense. Young people would try to increase their odds of survival by standing on their chairs or, strangely in a modern hospital environment, screaming.

In a discussion on why older people are usually less thin than teenagers, I proposed that it is because mature people have developed heuristics for living, which reduce the amount of effort they need to expend, to get what they want. Of course, that isn’t everything though. In marketing, a product goes from obscurity to growth, on to maturity, and then declines into obsolescence. Any person over the age of fifty-five trying to re-enter the job market knows how the job interviewer views the ‘product’ before them. The lifecycle of a product could be used as a template for understanding why some people feel wanted and some not so sought after. Further to this, is that as we grow from a babe-in-arms with only few needs, we develop a kaleidoscope of ‘wants’ in our teens, twenties and thirties, which slows down and declines as we reach a more mature age. Getting a job in the later stage of life means that invisibly showing the interviewer that one is not satisfied with what one already has, is an absolute that should not be ignored; If you are not nervous or eager in a job interview, it is because you don’t want new trainers or an electric scooter or a concert ticket. Having a contingency plan, such as older people tend to have, will not win the day in a job-seeking scenario. So, working because it is your hobby means you need to find a new hobby.

Likewise, in the hospital waiting room filled with waxwork people, if a snake runs in, the people will sigh and, might, just might, stand with their backs against a wall. Always wanting to have a bit of fun, I knew that taking a snake to a hospital appointment would be as exciting as a a sudden downpour in a high street when everyone has seen the weather forecast and is carrying umbrellas. Nobody will react differently to each other. No-one will cover their expensive hair-do with the important file folder for the upcoming business meeting. In other words, when the rain stops, there will be no crazy aftermath; no changes to a routine; no deviation from a very linear existence. I had to face it. Disruptive behaviour would simply get me removed from the hospital and the only thing I would leave behind me would be some ‘tut-tuts’ under soft breaths. Realistically, no-one over the age of fifty wants anyone to suddenly play the soundtrack of jungle animals from a Tarzan film in a mausoleum. Macaws screeching, lions roaring and chimpanzees chattering, discordant jokes fail in the translation.

Fortunately, there were not enough seats for the number of patients and at last the perfect opportunity for disruption occurred. An elderly man came in and the only chair available had been reserved by a selfish handbag belonging to a comparatively young woman seated next to it. The handbag stubbornly refused to give up its chair..

‘At last’, I thought.

I broke my conversation off with a bloke from Northamptonshire who was telling me about a man he knows in Spain.

     ‘Would you like to sit here, Sir?’ I rose from my chair. The hobbling man faltered in his steps, and I knew he had his eye on the handbag and was heading that way.

     ‘Er, er..’

     ‘No problem, sit here. I don’t mind.’

Bingo! He moved towards my now vacant seat. Of course, the handbag’s companion called over to me. The handbag had jumped into her lap.

     ‘There is a space here if you want it.’

     ‘No, I am fine. Thanks.’

Because my now occupied seat was at the end of a line of seats, and I was standing against the wall, by taking only a single step, I was able to introduce the ninety-something year old to my, now suddenly bereft, chatting partner.

     ‘He knows all about the churches in Norwich’. I said to the old chap.

They talked for a while, while I enjoyed watching the guilt ebb from the minds of the waiting patients. I could see that some people felt none, but most obviously the youngish woman glowed with confusion and regret.

I felt that I had gained a house-point or a gold star or something for polite performance. I suppose a scout or guide might get a badge to sew on. I mentioned this to my previous talking companion when the elderly man with his walking stick was almost immediately called.

     ‘Old man with walking stick!’ the ophthalmologist whispered. Perhaps she likes playing games with people’s hearing. Maybe she thinks that it makes the patients more attentive. You know, prepare them for the instructions she is about to give. ‘Look here. Look there. Turn your head to the right…..’

     ‘Would you like me to carry your stick for you, Sir?’ I asked the slow moving man as he passed. He smiled, while a nurse started to splutter an explanation that he needed it.

My seating-neighbour said that my gold star was something you get in a primary school, so I told him I was trying to earn enough to be promoted to chair monitor.

Almost immediately another patient entered the waiting room and my fun companion offered his chair. I knew I had competition now. Who can win the most gold stars? By now, he was aware that I knew that I had made a lot of people feel guilty by showing kindness.

The new person found another seat as someone else was called. No-one got any nods of approval.

Things got interesting when two people came in accompanying a gent in an electrified wheelchair, and parked him next to me. Because I was at the end of the row of seats and my now ‘sworn buddy for life’ was next to me, we offered our seats to the standing relatives. Jason, my ‘friend’ was called before he reached the wall, so whoever was responsible for giving out the gold stars missed him and gave his to me. This meant that I had accumulated enough to sit next to the handbag that was now dozing on the woman’s lap. I approached her, and she clutched all her other belongings closer to her.

I know that she was relieved to be soon called because she must have read the same page of her book twelve times. She never turned a page in ten minutes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her that I wasn’t going to steal her stuff after she gathered it together, before I sat down next to her.