Recently, my sister had a baby and I spent an entire evening and some of the very early morning hours of the next day waiting to meet my first nephew. You would think this would be incredibly boring, not because of what I was there for, but because I wasn’t actually involved in any way regarding the birth. I went to her room a couple times and chatted with her but for the most part, it was my mother and bro-in-law that were in there with her while me and my father waited around in the waiting room.
At first, I kept myself busy watching some television and catching up on some notes for work. Then things got a little more difficult to keep my mind distracted. They closed the Tim Horton’s around eight or nine so I couldn’t keep wandering down there for coffee and snacks so I had to rely on the sparse supply of vending machine provisions to get me through the hours.
As I was wandering down to the Timmie’s, I did make some observations. One, there are an inordinately large amount of ATM’s in the hospital considering it’s not really a store of any kind. On my way from the third floor maternity ward down to the little Timmie’s, I passed at least four and noticed a few others in my various wanderings throughout the night as well.
I also noticed that every person I passed in the halls, employees, visitors, or patients, never said a word. You would perhaps get a slight smile but it was as if there was an unspoken rule that no one was allowed to talk…EVER. I could see this in the later hours, but this was the same around seven when I had just arrived to the hospital.
There was one exception to this rule. A woman who was pushing a cart of cleaning supplies and had a heavy accent started laughing almost hysterically at the sounds of an obviously excited father-to-be telling the mother in the room down the hall from my sister to push. He’d say it several times and she laugh and then say it as well, continuing to laugh hysterically. I couldn’t help but laugh with her because she was so funny and enthusiastic about her imitation.
The revolving door at the entrance to the hospital was somewhat of an enigma. It was automatic so you didn’t have to push it. However, when you were still about five feet away, it would start rotating so you’d step inside and it would suddenly stop and say, “Please step forward”. You would then have to shuffle forward a foot before it would start moving again and let you either in or out of the hospital.
There was an aquarium in the entrance lobby to the hospital with tropical fish and I found myself watching them while I was waiting for my mother to go to the washroom. They were all very beautiful but I notice one little angel fish that was somewhat gimped up. He was swimming fine, but on an angle. I couldn’t figure out why as there was nothing really wrong with his fins or anything and he didn’t look sick. He reminded me a lot of Gill from Finding Nemo.
Gill, the injured angel fish from Finding Nemo
Eventually, as it got later, the only thing available to keep me entertained was the small television in the waiting room that had cable up to channel 14. I now remember why we ditched cable at our house. There was absolutely nothing on but crappy movies, television shows I don’t really like, or the news, which was as it always is; boring and depressing. Eventually though, my mother left the room so the sister and the bro-in-law could have their baby and I was able to chat with her until the big moment arrived.
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