A dozen hard plastic chairs line up against the wall like spectators in a game. How much agony, impatience, diagnoses have they seen? Can they, in their cold and yellow plastic hearts, know all that has been in their patients’ minds? Under the chairs, neat and orderly rows of tile all in black and white reflect nothing of the chaos and grey areas and blurry lines in life. Happy pictures of smiling faces and beautiful places hang in neat array. Who designs these waiting rooms? Are they intended to be as cruel a mockery of real life as possible? The cold and wintry air can give a person frostbite. The air tastes and smells stale, a combination of latex gloves, medicine, and futures lost. On a television mounted high on the wall, black and white captions flash across the screen and there is no sound. It shouldn’t be on the news channel. There are enough problems in here without having to worry about the world’s problems too.