The air conditioning vent’s cold hands choke me under the ruse of ventilation; like a frosty serpentine snake looking for its next victim. It must be a lie, since the beaded droplets of sweat on my neck form an intricate necklace before crashing down to the floor.
The evil monster behind the desk announces that the ‘doctor’ will still be a little while longer. Am I just supposed to believe what she says simply because she claims to have a nursing degree? The villainous box of cold air has 16 of them.
My shirt sticks to my skin as I become more and more impatient. No matter how much frozen air comes out of that white box, the oxygen in this room is simply running out.
The deeper breaths I take, the more I'm reminded of the white walls pushing me further and further down. Closing in on me. It’s as if they already know what the impending diagnosis is. Death by claustrophobia?
I can’t help but feel strangled by the smell of the pervasive cocktail of death and clorox in this room. I begin to wonder what they are truly attempting to sterilise? It's almost as if the ghosts of the people who died here are swirling around, taking my breath as a souvenir of their stolen souls. I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t relentlessly trying to steal mine.
Did they die from sickness, or did they simply drop dead from waiting?
Hypothermia. Definitely hypothermia.
The clock on the wall is trying to trick me. He thinks I’m stupid enough to think that no time has passed. Maybe his hands are also frozen by the cold? However, time must be moving, since the action movie on the television screen has already started over twice. The blaring gunfire from the screen is nothing but white noise compared to the warfare that plagues this battle ground.
The bright white bulbs are the final straw. There is not one crevice of this room left unassaulted by the sharp, pointed shards of light. I can almost feel them sinking their teeth into the back of my neck. Of course the evil nurse has the curtains closed. She knows that sunlight will render her degenerate minions useless!
What I can only assume used to be pink flowers in the corner have now been murdered. A cruel reminder that life cannot exist in this room. Their faces frowning downwards as if they knew what their foreboding fate was. How ironic that the flowers have died of thirst yet I still feel like I'm drowning.
I don’t know how to swim...
In the back of my mind I know that they will soon be replaced by plastic taxidermy substitutes.
Then it happens. The monster announces my name over the speakers. As I run towards the so-called doctor's office that I have fantasized about during my entire tenure in this room, the sweat on my forehead slowly trickles away and the clock begins to dance once again. However the weight pressing down on my chest has now only gotten stronger.
As I inch closer to the front desk, the monster’s formidable, crooked smile begins to shapeshift as she bellows out “the doctor will see you now.”
“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”