Overheard: In The Surgery Waiting Room

Waiting, 2007

Every one a story:

“I told him you can't just cut across the top. I was right back there again. And we'd just fought off infection in the same toe. I told him you've got to cut down the sides. Thought my toe would just fall off.”

“Are you sure he’s really a doctor?”

“Cutting in a V-shape is not the right way. Hell, I could have told him that.”

“They say peroxide chases an infection in, not out.”

“He's already told me I can do things to you. You just wait and see what happens when we get home.”

“I tell you, it's all stress. All of it. I don't know why he'd have it. I keep telling him not to have it. I tell him that all the time. But do you think he listens to me?”

“Those Wendy's onions stay with you, don't they?”

“My mind's right. It's my body that's out of whack.”

“He has pain everywhere, especially you know where.”

“I told that doctor, ‘Just put a sock on it.’ That's just what I said.”

“They told me two hours. We've been here three hours already. I hope Beth appreciates how long we've been waiting.”

“If the lord wants this to be her time, that's just what it'll be. Ain't nothing we can do about it.”

“Do you see that lady's green shoes? Imagine wearing those at the hospital, what with all these sick people around.”

“Sweetie, your daddy's going to be just fine.”

“zzzzzzzzzz”

“It must run in the family.”

“I told him how to get here. If he can't find it it's his own damn fault.”

“You'd think they'd have something Christian on the TV in a hospital.”

“Do you think I really care what Jimmy thinks?”

“Her foot was stuck to the tree, I tell you. Stuck! I think she broke every single bone in it. Her foot, I’m talking about. I don't know about the tree.”

“I fell flat out on my kitchen floor.”

“That was some terrible food.”

“The force of hitting the floor of the car...”

“I can't keep up with every old fart I know.”

“I'm just fine. I wanted to ask her ‘How are YOU?’"

“My little finger is dead from all my surgeries.”

“The doctor said, ‘Who's the patient here?’ Just who does he think he is to say something like that to me?”

“Didn't you want to kill him?”

“They don't have a clue what it's like.”

“Did you hear the one about the monkey that walked into the bar?”

“The doctor told me I needed to get a hospital bed for him. I told him I'm not going to put a damned hospital bed in my dining room. I don't care how close to death he is! Not in my dining room!”

“I'm tired of waiting.”

“She walked those three steps up from the garage into my family room just like she owned the place. The gall! The next time she came she acted like nothing at all had happened.”

“I can't wait for the party we're going to have when she gets better.”

“The kind of help I want to give is not the kind of help he needs.”

“Linda thinks he made up the blindness to get sympathy. I think what he really has is ADHD.”

“The judge told the father that he had to take the child out of that environment.”

“He looks like he's listening. But he's not listening.”

“I'm so worried. I've been praying all day. But I'm not getting any answers.”

“Oh, barman! I’ll have what the grasshopper down there’s having.”