Earlier in the week I was at the Toronto East General Hospital having a bunch of pre-operative tests in preparation for a rather complicated hernia surgery. And so, for most of the day I sat in a waiting room with a collection of people who were also going through their prescribed battery of tests. There were probably about six different exams (things like EKG, blood work, X-Ray etc…) that each patient had to complete, and so we were frequently called away for a period of an hour or so, and each time I’d return to the waiting room there would be a new mix of people.
There really couldn’t’ have been a more ethnically diverse assembly, and it wasn’t uncommon to see an adult child serving as a translator for their parent, who invariably, couldn’t make head nor tails of all the forms and instructions they were being given. It was actually entirely sweet, and as the World Cup soccer game between Spain and Switzerland unfolded on the TV, we all sat together, smiling and nodding, trying to pass the time as easily as possible.
After a sufficient amount of time had passed, a woman who was serving as her mother’s guardian looked around the room and judging that not many people were really watching the soccer, asked if anybody minded if she turned the channel. There were no protests, and so she switched the channel to Tyra and pulled the largest chair in the room right up in front of the TV. Smiling, she said, “Well, if I have to be here all day, I may as well make myself comfortable!” And so she did.
After about 15 minutes a man returned to the waiting room from one of his tests. He took one look at the TV, and seeing Tyra instead of the World Cup, shot me an utterly stricken look. For the next 10 minutes, as he went through his important-looking office documents, he made all sorts of facial grimaces, as if he was now suffering the most horrible physical pain. Soon enough, the Tyra-watching woman and her mother were called away for a test, and the man immediately asked the room if he could turn the volume down, making some disparaging remark in the process. Once again, there were no protests.
The room now in awkward silence, the man kept looking over to me for support. He saw in me a compatriot, I think, as we were both white, similarly aged, apparently healthy in appearance and sporting a clichéd “downtown” look. Out of the blue he started to talk to me about architecture, design and various restaurants.
It was pretentious, of course, and more than a little embarrassing, but I strove to be generous toward him.
Illness levels us all. In the hospital you’re no different from anybody else—we’re all vulnerable and subject to fates and circumstances we can’t control. It’s scary, and when you look around the waiting room at all the other people—some very ill, some scared, some powerless to even communicate– you see reflections of yourself, and I don’t think that man liked that. He needed to be something else. He needed people to know he was different and that he didn’t share in the mortal apprehensions of the rest of us. And so, using language that nobody else needed to communicate, he whistled past the graveyard, conspicuously trying to separate himself from the pack.