There are hundreds, if not thousands, of rooms around the world whose sole purpose is for you to sit in it, and wait. I mean, that’s true of your living room I guess, just sitting there, watching something, waiting for bed. And yes, it’s true of your bedroom too, with the extra bonus of making you lie down as you wait until morning.
There are rooms with seats, designed to accommodate you waiting for a doctor, or a dentist, or an optician. There are rooms with slightly more fancy seating, called reception areas, where you wait for a meeting. There are even rooms where you wait for your tyres to be changed.
None of these rooms come close to the real Waiting Room though.
I always thought it was a rumour, a wild story told by idiots to other idiots. Until I found myself in the Waiting Room.
I’m still in it of course.
I can’t be anywhere else, now that I’m here, waiting.
It’s not like I even entered it by choice. Two people decided to put me in it, before I was even aware of what was going on. That was up to them I guess, but it might’ve been nice to be consulted.
So here I am, waiting.
This Waiting Room is different to all the other ones of course. It’s bigger. It has anterooms, and there’s even an outside. And it lacks something important, that other lesser waiting rooms have. All of those ones are angled so you can see your eventual exit. You look at the door, expectant, knowing that soon it will open, and you’ll be called inside. Sometimes you even get a glimpse of what’s beyond the threshold. It’s tantalising, and it gives you hope.
Not here though.
There’s no obvious way out. No glimpse of what’s beyond, just fear, and fantasies made up in the heads of others and shared as dreams and hopes.
I just wait.
I don’t know what I’m really waiting for.
Just that I know, one day, the wait’ll be over, and I’ll no longer be in the Waiting Room.
