Thursday, December 3, 2020

Hospital Waiting Room in Advent - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Hospital Waiting Room in Advent

 

“How could I bear a crown of gold when the Lord bears a crown of thorns? And bears it for me!”

 

-Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen

 

The pre-dawn parking-lot is crowded enough, and almost pretty with the high orange-ish light reflecting nicely on the rainy pavement. The cold wind blows a lonely paper cup along among the puddles and the cars with the more-than-one-family-members dozing or reading their MePhones. It seems as if the world itself is a waiting room for now.

 

In the lobby a queue forms, everyone standing six feet away from each other as ordered by plastic signs on the floors. A cheerful-enough volunteer aims a little plastic gun at each human head as it passes, and asks each owner of a head DO YOU HAVE ANY SYMPTOMS DO YOU HAVE A SORE THROAT HAVE YOU BEEN AROUND ANYONE WITH THE CORONAVIRUS HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF STATE RECENTLY

 

Does Louisiana count?

 

Pass, friend.

 

A cold and fashionable Christmas tree obscures an image of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen next to the row of elevators marked ‘B’ along a covid-silent corridor.  She ministers to the poor and ill as she always has, and the medical and support staffs of the hospital do the same, under her support and patronage.

 

A visitor with his mask and his pass can hear his footsteps echoing-echoing as he passes through the silences, and read signs announcing activities scheduled long ago that were canceled long ago because of the lockdowns. Only rarely will he see a masked and gowned figure seemingly scuttling into hiding while carrying a tray of lab specimens or pushing a cart or whispering into an official glowing screen.

 

Doors that used to be open are secured with NO ENTRY or STAFF ONLY signs, and former passages are blocked with new plywood panels or panes of clear plastic in this unclear time.

 

The cardiovascular ICU waiting room is empty – ONE FAMILY MEMBER ONLY, reads a sign scotch-taped to a door, and NO COFFEE BECAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS YOU WILL FIND COFFEE IN THE CAFETERIA announces another. Some seats are marked off-limits with yellow crime-scene-ish tape even though there is no one in the room to be made off-limits. The television is dark and silent, the floors and plastic chairs are clean-upon-clean from repeated daily wipings and scrubbings and sprayings although almost no one ever goes to that room now. There are no people, no magazines, no bottles of water, nothing in the litter baskets. It’s like a scene from one of those Star Trek episodes in which an away-team beams down to a deserted space ship, a deserted city, or a deserted planet, only there is no thematic background music in the hospital.

 

This is the block of floors and space given over the cardiac care and surgery; the areas where CV patients are treated are hidden behind doors and walls and faces of appropriate secrecy and discretion.

 

Behind those doors and walls life and death are worked out through the work and thought and education and brilliance and industry of so very many health care workers, from physicians to the nice fellow with the bucket and mop, and through the mysteries of God and His saints.

 

As for our visitor, he can do nothing but take a seat – one without the yellow crime-scene-ish tape – and wait in silent prayer for one he loves.

 

-30-

 

 

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