Debbie Urbanski
A room in a house that led into a room in a house. Another room in another old house, this one with a coat rack and an ornate mirror. The basement waiting room, on the other hand, contained a tank of fish. Is that metaphorical. There weren't often windows. Another metaphor? Like a windowless room. Like a turbulent aquarium. If my son was waiting in the same room with me, he would be covered in fury. His third therapist's waiting room had no windows either. Is that the same or a different metaphor? Facsimiles of parenting advice hung from the load-bearing wall on metal hooks, setting the appropriate mood of impalement. In the waiting rooms of my husband's and my marriage therapists, on the other hand, dread trickled from the ugly neutral shelving like yellow acid. I am not making that up. I still have the contact burns. The receptionist ignored us. The receptionist said, "We're running a little behind today." The receptionist watched me kicking down the door to flee. I waited for my grandmother to die. I waited for my son to receive a diagnosis. My doctor told me I was okay but later I might not be okay, probably I would not be okay, unless I sat in these additional rooms where the chairs were blue with the darker heads of dandelions. I kept expecting someone to ask me what was I doing there. On the television, a healthy couple wanted to purchase a home only water was discharging into the cellar like a deal-breaker. What were the arm rests made out of: plastic, or rubber, or synthetic rubber? I kept expecting someone to send me home. The IV was still stinging. Should I have taken the second valium. Another house on another television: the couple argued about sump pumps versus rose bushes. It was either one or the other. Cancer was certainly in the air. Like ozone before or is it after a lightning strike. I didn't think the wood was real there. On the television, happiness lay between whisper gray and warmer neutrals. I returned to waiting room #2. I returned to waiting room #2 again. I returned again, overpowered by the urge to describe the variations of the chairs. Curved interiors calm women; I can see a male architect imagining that. This time the television was turned off and the chair fabrics featured geometric adornments while the carpet was patterned lightly. There is something dangerous about a solid color, said the male architect, I imagine. The light sconces in the room were curved as well, a detail I forgot originally to mention. The mother in the waiting room, not me, a different mother, said with determination, "What happens next—"
In my first dream about my second surgery, I was in a waiting room. Surprise, surprise. I was in a waiting room on a children's floor decorated with the universe. I explained to my mom I can't recover on a floor of children. As proof I motioned to my breasts which were still there at the time under the hospital gown. My dream mom shrugged: what could she have done. The dream nurse read me a picture book about dreaming bears. There were kleenex boxes on all the available surfaces. I am talking about the real world again, I forgot to mention. There were waiting rooms within waiting rooms. The IV was stinging still. An old man read a list of questions to his older dying mother. Would I mind, asked the receptionist, if this moment turned out to last forever or nearly forever? "Just follow the signs," she told me. The answer was yes. The surgeon was running late. "I think," said the TV mother, "this is an opportunity to speak to someone through the color of glass."