Crying Time

I wasn’t expecting to learn anything by sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

“It’s such a relief they got all the melanoma,” my friend had said to me after I told her I was seeing yet another doctor to have my droopy eyelid evaluated — a vestige of my recent cancer surgeries.

I nodded and smiled. I didn’t want to tell her I was still shocked by the stranger in the mirror, or that sadness still sneaks up on me, leaving me with wet cheeks.

No one wants to hear that.

The next day, I drove 45 minutes to the appointment. In an unspoken affirmation to the current building frenzy in Savannah, the medical office parking lot was a tangled mess of cracked pavement and towering cranes.

I slipped into a newly paved spot and sat for a moment.

What was next?

Walking into the waiting room, I approached the receptionist’s desk opposite the entrance. The long and narrow room was the size of a boxcar.

To the left of the desk sat about 20 occupied, well-worn armchairs. To the right, a half-wall divider separated the space. Twelve chairs were beyond it, with six patients waiting.

A sharp whiff of fresh paint hit my nose.

Behind the front desk, the cornflower-blue wall was covered only with irregular patches of white spackling.

“Name, please.”

I could see the top of the receptionist’s head, the rest of her hidden behind a massive computer screen.

A rhinestone-encrusted headband crowned her dark brown hair. Sparkling, oversized stars dangled from her earlobes.

I was hoping to see her beauty pageant smile, but she never looked up, even as she handed me a printout.

“Hold onto this until you see the doctor,” she said.

It was the height of respiratory viral season. Flu, COVID, and RSV were on the prowl, waiting to attack. After checking in, I walked over to the half-wall divider and discovered an empty bench on the other side.

This put me in a position where most of the waiting-room patients sat behind me, their voices audible but faces hidden. The smaller cluster of six patients remained in my line of sight.

A middle-aged man in a ballcap and muddy boots sneezed and sniffed up wet secretions.

My stomach turned.

Pulling an N95 mask out of my bag, I hoped its stiff layers, along with my recent vaccinations, were fortress enough to fend off airborne enemies. I snapped the black elastic bands behind my ears.

A battle ensued: my eyeglasses kept fogging, then slipping down the nose bridge of the mask.

A low hum of sighs periodically rippled through the waiting room.

Behind me, on the other side of the dividing wall, a woman began speaking in a distinct Southern drawl.

“You here to see the doctor?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s right,” answered another woman in a gravelly, low-register voice. I couldn’t see her either. “Been waitin’ near a half hour.”

“Hmm, my mother hated waiting at the doctor,” said the first woman. “You know, I’m a lot like her. Then, I suppose, I’m not like her at all.”

“That be true of most mothers and daughters, I suspect,” replied the other woman.

I envisioned a well-dressed younger woman, hair perfectly coiffed, speaking to an older lady.

“Well, I was never a rule follower,” said “Belle” as I silently named her. “My mother was. We fought a lot about that. And my dad was always trying to make the peace. He was a saint.”

I added high school cheerleader to my imaginary description of Belle — her voice carrying, without the need of a megaphone.

The back-office door rasped; a medical assistant appeared. Heads turned immediately. Who was next to receive the golden ticket to an open exam room?

Suddenly, nearly pushing the young MA over, a five-year-old blond-headed boy in wrinkled Bluey pajamas darted out.

“I don’t wanna be here,” he screamed. The MA (who I assumed was his mother) grabbed him before he could escape and dragged him back inside.

“Stop!” she hissed urgently. “I told you to stay here!”

The door slammed shut. A working mom with a sick kid, I thought. I tightened my mask.

“You know, I hate Facebook and social media,” Belle continued.

“Yeah,” said the older woman. Grandma seems like a good name, I thought. Her voice was reassuring. Somehow, I pictured her knitting and nodding.

Grandma continued. “Lots out there on that stuff. But it can be a way of keepin’ in touch, you know.”

“Sometimes you don’t want to know,” said Belle, a wisp of sadness in her tone.

The conversation continued for several minutes more.

I wasn’t sure why it was hooking me so much.

Belle was speaking so loudly that I was certain the entire waiting room could hear. But there was something more. Something gripping about her sharing her pain in a room full of people seeking relief from their own.

I wanted to know how it ended. Was she going to be okay?

I looked down at the paper I was holding and realized my insurance information was not correct. I paused. My perch was somewhat isolated. But my curiosity was piqued.

I had to see what this woman, sharing more than I ever did in the Confessional, looked like.

“You know, I just feel so antisocial now!” she exclaimed.

I walked back to the reception desk and asked the young lady, now playing Candy Crush on her phone, why my insurance had South Carolina next to it instead of Georgia, where I lived.

I casually turned to look at the far end of the waiting room.

“I just don’t want to be on Facebook, or anything like that, right now,” insisted Belle.

My jaw dropped.

“Everything just feels so…I don’t know…bad,” Belle said.

Strands of gray-and-white-flecked hair fell over her makeup-free face. Her ankles were swollen, woolen socks wrapped and wrinkled around them. One hand rested on an aluminum walker placed in front of her chair. Her black pants were stretched out and baggy.

Loneliness seemed to drape her shoulders.

An older woman sat across the room from her and nodded. This must be Grandma. Dressed in a flowing floral outfit, she sat with her body relaxed in the armchair. Curly ebony strands of hair peeked out from under her cobalt-blue turban.

My face flushed. Neither woman fit my concocted mental image of them.

“You’re fine,” the receptionist said, interrupting my thoughts. “This office is in South Carolina, not Georgia, so we have to file insurance through the state office.”

I nodded and thanked her, returning to my bench, where I sat again with my back to the two women.

“Life can be tough,” I heard Grandma say. “Lord knows. But if you got life, you keep on going. You get up, and you just keep on going.”

“You’re right,” Belle said. “But you know, the hard stuff starts right away. The moment you come into this world, you get spanked. And they make you cry. Then we have to fight for everything from there on out.”

“Oh, no, baby,” Grandma said. She paused. “They just are making sure you are alive! The crying is you sayin’, ‘I’m here now. I got this.’”

In my head, I heard my mom’s voice. “Wendy, when you were born, you never cried. You just opened your beautiful eyes. They were the brightest blue.”

Now my eyes filled.

The back door creaked open. “Dr. Lenz? Come on back.”

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For other stories about health and wellness, check out Holding onto Hope or Wonder in Flight

Have you learned something important in an unexpected place? I’d love to hear about it.