In the Belly of the Beast

Like all hospital waiting rooms, the staff had it painted a soft yellow, a comforting color for visitors inside. Cushy couches lined every wall, and divided the room in half, in case the visitors decided to war over their divided territory. Even at eight o’ clock at night a few visitors chattered away, not allowing the 2 ft lampshades a bit of rest. The lampshades continued to dampen the light, despite the fact that it hurt their eyes, eyes that peaked out from every tiny hole in the lampshades’ fabric. A child’s toy sat in boredom on one couch-side table; no child had played with it in months. Wisely the hospital had barred young visitors from this wing of the hospital, knowing how little children like to carry diseases in their cotton-lined pockets.

Any visitor sitting on the couches long enough would notice how strange the designer’s tastes were. White contact lens shaped lamps hanged from the ceiling, with black pupils at the bottom watching the visitor’s every move. Wooden shelves too narrow to hold books branched out from the far wall. Perhaps the decorator intended them to be windows, only to realize this wall only opened to the inside of the building, not the outside.

A desk and a door kept guard over the intensive care unit, scrutinizing each and every visitor that came their way. A slight groan in their wooden bodies indicated a yes, while two said  no. When a visitor didn’t past the unspoken test, the door would fail to open when a visitor pulled on his handle. By the time the visitor arrived with hospital help, the door would have already sent messages through the floor tiles to all the other doors to keep alert. So far no incidents had occurred to warrant summoning floor-wet signs in the closet, but the waiting door room and desk dutifully kept on watching. Two days before they had celebrated their two month anniversary, though no other piece of furniture could figure out what they had done two months earlier to warrant such an occasion.

A separate room had a television, a vending machine, and several more tables. The room was deceptively dark, because no one ever turned the lights on. Unsuspecting visitors would suppose the room to be quiet, when in fact the television seemed permanently set between two channels: one with 24 hour news casts in English, and the other with telenovas in Español. Two person tables kept each other company, still trying to both learn English and Spanish. (Both tables had been made in China, and they only understood Mandarin.) Newspapers kept the tables warm, and entertained visitors with the news when they dared.  Meanwhile the individually wrapped junk food in the vending machine watched the visitors nervously. They always hated whenever one visitor decided to purchase one of them, but no more than they hated being twisted by the coils and cruelly dropped to the dispenser without a thought. The junk food packages didn’t dare contemplate what awaited them on the other side of the glass.