Inspired by a Visit to the Emergency Room at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital

Hour One

A young man passes us fresh masks

with a set of tongs.

(An image of being passed a steamy hot white rolled-up towel on a flight

in the same way surfaces.)

No, we don’t have plague symptoms.

Yes, we are vaccinated.

These are our names.

Wait.

Hour Two

The thick plexi-glass that separates all of the chairs

in this place starts to feel confining.

A friendly woman sits down in the plexiglass cage

next to ours and tells us that her husband passed

two years ago.

We feel sad because her face kind of cracks

when she says this.

A nurse athletically rubbing anti-Covid sanitizer on her hands

calls out our name.

Praise be.

We enter the triage room.

“Pop out your health card.”

I struggle to extract the card from the wallet and the nurses face turns to stone until I do.

Go register now.

I sit on the chair in front of the registering place.

An impressive amount of scotch tape holds papers on the glass in front of me.

THE PERSON WILL NOT OPEN THE WINDOW UNTIL YOUR MASK IS COVERING YOUR NOSE AND MOUTH COMPLETELY.

DO NOT TOUCH THE GLASS.

DO NOT USE YOUR PHONE.

I suppose the person who will open the window

likes to let the papers do the talking.

Wait.

Hour Three

A skeletal young man sits on a wheelchair

slowly moving back and forth in front

of us. I read his hoodie.

Black Sabbath. AC DC. Metallica.

Brian Johnson sings “The walls were shaking…”

in my head.

Wait.

Hour Four

CODE WHITE. CODE WHITE.

A motely crew of men with SECURITY printed in yellow on

their jackets run out of the door that is locked,

where the doctor is.

A tall young man with white, white skin, like the skin of my scalp

staggers into the space in front of us,

dragging a long bottle of fluid on wheels.

Wait.

Hour Five

The AC DC guy is now laying on the floor.

Please take him behind the locked door?

is the unspoken plea of the room.

(Yes, before us.)

We are hungry.

Silent.

I hear a woman talking on her phone:

“This is the only emergency room open on the island today.

I drove to Baddeck but there was no doctor.“

Wait.

Hour Six

A young couple rushes in with a toddler

who is making a strange coughing noise.

Can that noise really be coming from that little boy?

(I think of ventriloquists.)

The poor boy is taken behind the locked door.

A sense of depair sits in.

It is a seven hours

since the British-sounding nurse at 811

told us to come to this place.

I see that there is a nurse in the triage room

but no patient.

I cautiously approach.

I ask if we will see a doctor if we stay for three more hours.

(We know somehow that that is our limit.)

The nurse has a stone face. (I imagine him smiling though.)

“I don’t like to estimate waiting times.”

Fair enough, I guess.

“But the last person to be seen was here for thirteen hours.”

We gather our belongings and shuffle to the door,

letting the volunteer know that we are leaving.

We can't wait after all.