Heart Attack King

As of yesterday, Mac has had his fourth heart attack.  The fourth one in a year.  He is becoming the heart attack King.  A designation we both would like to relegate.

I am now sitting in the waiting room of the heart catheter lab.  The Doctors are assuming he will need another stint.  I am once again sitting and waiting.  The waiting room is slow today.  There have been times when it was packed.  Every possible extended family member crowding in.  Stacking children, snacks, books and magazines.  Not today.  There are three of us now.  Two men waiting for a woman whose procedure is done.  She had everything go fine.  Uneventful.  And they wait until they will be allowed to go back and watch her magically awaken.

Waiting rooms are strange places.  People walk through.  We become some sort of mutual zoo.  We stare at each other with blank faces.  Some thinking.  Some trying desperately to not think.  No matter the temperature of the room there seems to be cold air that blows out of the vents.  Spring, summer, fall or winter, the ducts spew cold air.  I have to wonder how the room can be warm.  I'm cold.

We sit.  We listen to one another's conversations.  Unapologetically we nose into one another's lives.  We wait.  One of the talking men blows his nose.  Instead of throwing his tissue into the small trash can near him.  He gets up and walks half way across the room to throw it in the trash behind me.  A cursory glance across my computer screen.  For this little window in time, our waiting lives intwine.

They talk about eating barbeque.  Skinny women.  The days of military service and how they could not wait to get out.  Health care.

The waiting room volunteer comes over to me and tells me that they have had a delay and Mac has just now been taken in for his angiogram.  More waiting.  More people walk about.  More stares.  I stare back.  I notice who has suitcases and who doesn't.  Who looks lost.  Who seems to have a purpose.  Who stares at who and who has to look away.  Some faces are too hard to look at.  There is an inherent fatigue that comes with waiting.  Can't be helped.  I continue participating in this little zoo.  Tired,  Hungry... dreaming of a waffle.  Waiting.

Louie