The Waiting Room

The vertical blinds tapped against the open window, casting striped patterns on the floor that sharpened and faded with the passing cloud.  
   Lizzie unfolded the letter on her lap and read it again, searching for something between the lines. If the news were good, surely they would have wanted to put her mind at rest. But the impersonal wording – You are asked to contact your GP surgery to discuss the results of your biopsy – struck her as portentous.
   She looked around at the other patients, not one of them anywhere near her age. From the few who met her eye, she could tell what they thought they saw. Well, she was no feeble-minded old crone hobbling to church every Sunday with a Bible in her handbag. She was eighty-two, and
part of the first generation of working-class students to enter
university. And her Tripos from Cambridge made her better educated than most of these kids with their confetti degrees in media studies and marketing.
   Her eyes drifted to the girl with the rings through her lip, tapping on her phone, no doubt texting some vapid message in appalling grammar.Then to the man with the tattooed neck and earphones, nodding to some tuneless rock beat.
   Rock and folk had their place, of course. She and Peter used to travel to Knebworth and Pontardawe on his Lambretta. They’d gone to the first Glastonbury in 1970, camping under the Somerset sky, drinking cider, smoking red Lebanese and making love in their one-man bivouc.
   But there was more to music than that. How many of these people have enjoyed a Bach fugue? How many have even heard the names Shostakivich or Miles Davis? Who was it said that most people go through their lives without ever listening to music - they just have it on?
   She watched them all like a cynical juror.
   That teen with the pink eye shadow and matching trainers. Just the sort of girl who turns her statements into questions and writes the lower-case i with a circle instead of a dot
   Lizzie's anger grew, gathering pace like a toboggan on the Cresta Run, and there was no stopping it until it reached the end.  
   She picked up a magazine left on a chair beside her and flicked carelessly through the pages. She began to read an article: “Among the celebrities to receive invites to the king’s coronation were…” She threw it down in disgust. Lizzie was no royalist, but what truly galled her was the unstoppable Americanisation of the language. The noun in British English is invitation, not bloody invite. 
   She resisted the temptation to read the letter again, folding it and putting it back in her bag.
   She was not afraid of death. As a humanist, she believed it to be exactly what it appeared: the end. Nescience. Oblivion. A reasonable compromise, she always thought, between the bliss of heaven and the torments of hell.
   No, it wasn’t death she feared, but dying. Peter
had gone peacefully three years ago, at eighty-one. Would she be so fortunate, or would her biopsy result preclude that possibility?
   If Peter were with her now, she knew exactly what he’d say. He was never any good at offering comfort. “Never mind, Lizzie. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed and I'll make us a nice cup of tea when we get home.”  Strange, she thought with a smile, how the things that irritated you about someone become the very things you miss when they’re gone.    
   The waiting room kept its silence. Birdsong drifted in from the garden outside. The blinds continued to tap softly at the window and Lizzie closed her eyes.
   The peace was abruptly shattered by a young boy hurtling through the doorway holding a battery-powered dinosaur, roaring and snapping as he operated the controls with unrestrained delight.
   A young woman hurried in behind him. “Oliver, I told you not to play with that in here!” She gave an apology to the
company, seized the boy’s arm and seated herself next to Lizzie.
   It was uncanny, but the lad looked just like Lizzie imagined the child she and Peter never had. A long blond fringe almost falling over his pale blue eyes. He stood in front of Lizzie and, as he looked up at her, she detected the faint whiff of porridge on his breath. Responding to her smile, he said, “Santa brought me this for Christmas. It’s a tranasorus rex. That means king lizard. And it’s the most scariest monster ever!”
   “It certainly looks fierce,” said Lizzie.
   “It’s got these huge teeth that can bite a car in half. If it saw you, it would go r-a-w-r, like this.” He used the controls to demonstrate the sound again.
   “That’s it!” said his mother, snatching the toy away. “And stop annoying this lady.”
    “It’s quite all right,” said Lizzie. “He’s no bother.”
   Unconcerned with his rebuke, the boy pressed on. “And you can’t run away cos it will stamp on you an’ eat you.”
   “My word, that is scary.”
    “Puddles doesn’t like him.”
   “Puddles?”
   “She’s our new kitten. She’s called Puddles cos she wees on the floor.”    
   This brought a few smiles and sniggers from the company.    “I’m sure she’ll grow out of the habit soon,” said Lizzie.       Mindful that the boy had nothing to do now, she drew on her years of experience as a child psychologist. “Would
you like to play a game, Oliver?”
   “What kind of game?”
    “I know one called statues. You stand in front of me and pretend to be a statue, which means you’re made of stone. So you have to stay perfectly still. You mustn’t speak and you mustn’t change the look on your face. Shall we try it?”
   “Cool.”  
    “All right. Keep looking at me”
   Oliver stood still, looking up into Lizzie’s eyes. She waited a few seconds, then pulled a face and the boy instantly burst into giggles.    
   “That’s not fair,” he cried. “You made me laugh.”    “That’s what I’m supposed to do, Oliver. But never mind, let’s try a different game.”
   Oliver’s mother looked on in admiration as Lizzie explained the game of mirrors. Oliver was to pretend to be Lizzie’s reflection and copy all her movements. He grasped the idea at once. When Lizzie lifted her left arm, Oliver lifted his right. When she rubbed her nose, he did likewise.      As they played, Lizzie glanced again at the people around the room, noticing now that the girl with the lip rings wore a Free Palestine badge on her top. Some young people, she had to admit, evidently cared. And it was the young, she
recalled, who were pioneering the campaigns against climate change and fossil fuel.
   Lizzie had strived always to to be reasonable and fair, but was she becoming one of those insufferable old people who never stop complaining and blaming it all on anything
but the truth – jealousy of youth? When had she lost her faith in the young? When had she ceased to share in their optimism?
    “I’m sorry, Oliver, what did you say?”    
   “Can you come home with us and be my granny number three?”    
   Lizzie smiled.“I’d love to, but I don’t think grannies number one and two would like that.”
   “Oh, they would,” joked his mother. “Another
pair of hands to help with this little monkey? They’d welcome you with open arms. We all spoil him rotten, you see...”
   To Lizzie’s surprise, the woman’s voice faltered, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.
   “Oh dear!” said Lizzie. “Whatever’s the matter?”
   The woman pulled a tissue from her sleeve and
dabbed her eyes. “I’m so sorry. It’s just...” Then, in a
whisper, “Oliver has Hodgkin lymphoma. But the doctors are confident of a full recovery.”
   Lizzie felt as though a knife had pierced her heart. She fought the impulse to gather the boyin her arms and hold him close. Here she was, fretting over how the dwindling days of her own long life would end, while this child had already brushed against the end of his.
   At that moment, the doctor popped her head around the door. “Elizabeth Williams, please.”
   Lizzie wiped the tears from her own eyes She
bent, cupped the boy’s cheeks in her hands and kissed the top of his head. “Goodbye, Oliver. I’m so glad I met you. I’m sure you’ll grow into a fine young man. Be kind, love someone and replenish this wonderful world.”
   With a final smile to Oliver’s mother, Lizzie stepped out of the waiting room and followed the doctor along the corridor.

END