Medical Matters

Jean Paul Sartre is, as everyone knows, eminently quotable – and his quote is, “Hell is other people.” There may be others, but I’m buggered if I know them.

[In the interests of research I have just been to a web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeanpaul_sartre.html which lists 27 {Is that a Sartre-like number} quotes and, yes, I only knew the one above.]

Anyway.

I was thinking of Jean Paul Sartre (as you do) when I accompanied Paul Squared to his hospital appointment. I have been to hospitals reasonably frequently over the past year and have become something of a connoisseur of those ante rooms of Hell: The Hospital Waiting Room!

Whatever the style or period of the building there is a similarity in the appearance of the rooms.

They are always just that bit too small for the number of people waiting in them. They are all (apart from children’s waiting rooms) painted in ‘restful, pastel colours’ which are difficult to give a name to.

They all have magazines which are irritatingly out of date and are not what you’d choose to read. This is of course an improvement on what they used to be when they were woefully out of date and from another parallel universe (or The Tatler together with Horse and Hound.)

They have chairs made by the same people who manufacture seating objects (to call them chairs is an insult to comfort) in airports – you know, those devices which seem to be constructed to ensure that no traveller falls asleep, or indeed, ever feels comfortable.

There is, also, the Colourful Image: the picture or poster designed to Brighten Up The Whole Room. I have tried to link the image to the subject of the room, but have signally failed: large shark and neurosurgery? A cute creature merry go round and dentistry? Medicine has reasons that only medicine knows!

But it’s the people; it’s always the people that tell you that you are in a Hospital Waiting Room. I have never been alone in a waiting room and that usually allows the full range of types that are essential to the waiting experience.

There is always one person who does not look as though they should be there. Indeed so incongruous do they look that they disturb all the other people waiting who did not realise that they were quite as ill as that, if such a medical disaster is waiting for the same people that you are waiting for.

There is the monologue chatterer. This is the sort of person who can speak on the in-breath and keeps up a sotto voce one sided conversation of stultifying inconsequentiality.

There are the lost: who? why? what? how? The ones who don’t really understand what’s going on.

My favourite is the Past-timer, the person way into his or her pension but clearly indicating what they used to be like in their youth; with men it is evidenced by a tendency towards Brylcreem and inappropriate jumpers and a vague look of wondering if all the fuss is actually worth it.

Well, people watching always passes the time.