Odd Moments

I was roused from my waiting-room drowse when a woman called my name. She was shuffling folders as she  searched for someone named "Thomas Harris." She looked toward me, I nodded and guided the wheelchair through the maze of waiting patients. Then I followed her down a hallway to an examining room. She moved a chair to make way for my chair and watched as I eased into the space she had created. "Can you move a little more to the left?" I did, at least I thought I did. But my effort got no more than an "I guess that will do," from her. She asked if there had been any changes to my medications and if I had fallen in the last month. I answered "no" to both  questions. "OK, Someone will be with you in a minute," she said and left.

Five minutes later, there was a gentle knock on the door and a nurse let herself in. She took my temperature, clipped a small plastic device to the index finger of my right hand. A moment later, she took it off, looked at it, and said, "Good." Then came the blood pressure.

"I really like your shirt," she said, as she pumped up the band she'd put on my arm. "I love that color blue. It looks so good on you and it goes so well with the silver in your hair."

I mumbled a halfhearted "thank you."

"Your blood pressure looks good," she said. "125 over 68."

My blood pressure hasn't been that low in 20 years. Obviously, the remark about the silver in my hair took the life out of me.

*                    *                    *                    *

As Katie was leaving the dining room, she stopped by a table and handed a newspaper to the woman sitting there.

"Here's the Sunday paper," Katie said. "It's all here but the comics. I guess I left them in my apartment. I'll go get them for you."

"Don't worry about the comics," the woman said. "I never look at them."

"You don't read the comics?" Katie gasped. "That's my favorite part of the paper. They make me laugh, and I love to laugh. Don't you like to laugh?"

"I like to read the obituaries," the woman said.

*                    *                    *                    *

The woman looked to be in her twenties, and she seemed more than a little confused. She looked at the papers in her hand, looked at the sign with the first-floor apartment numbers down the hall to the left of the elevator, and shook her head. She walked to the other side of the elevator, glanced at the papers in her hand, looked at the sign with the first-floor apartments numbers in the hall to the right of the elevator, and shook her head head.

"Are looking for something?" I asked.

"I'm supposed to go to apartment 205," she said.

"The elevator is right there," I told her.

"Oh? I need the elevator?"