Operation

The background music is familiar: a popular song from the Fifties, sung by a then-famous female vocalist. The music is soft, and you can just about make out the words. The softness of the music is appropriate to the general ambience of the waiting room, where some ten or twelve people are either standing or sitting.

Some are new arrivals who have already announced their presence to the receptionist, a woman in her sixties who wears the pink jacket of a hospital volunteer. Once they have done this, they are told to take a seat.

Their information is passed along to a female clerk, younger, slimmer, and very efficient-appearing, in a form-fitting shirt and slacks, who is working at a computer terminal in a nook at one end of the waiting room. Every few minutes the clerk will emerge from her nook, a folder in her hand, and she will call out the name of one of the waiting patients.

It is interesting that she calls out only the first name to begin with. On answering the summons, the named patient is directed to accompany the clerk through a door into another room, where a nurse, in blue scrubs, takes the folder, greets the patient, and the two disappear as the door swings shut behind them.

If the patient does not answer when a name is first called out, the clerk will try again with the first name, adding a question mark, as she glances around the room. "Edith?" And only after there is no response, will she add a last name to the first. "Edith Bigler?" "Oswaldo?" " Oswaldo Morales?" And so on. Never "Miz Bigler" or "Mr Morales".

My guess is that fifty percent of the patients may be hard of hearing. Some have walkers or canes, and some are attended by family members or other caregivers. Most are there waiting to be admitted for minor surgery — cataracts, hands, feet, ingrown nails, that kind of thing.

The magazines set out in the waiting room are old, some over a year old. Some have pages torn out of them.

Once inside the adjoining pre-op room, you are greeted by a pleasant-mannered nurse who sits you down on a reclinable armchair. The nurse, one of the six in attendance this day, asks a number of questions about past surgeries, allergies, medications taken, and other details.

The music in here is as soothing as what had greeted us in the waiting room — in fact the music in both rooms appears to emanate from the same central source. One may wonder whether in the actual operating theater the same music may be heard.

The nursing station in the center of the room has two computer screens, two telephones, a two potted plants. The nurses come and go, exchanging remarks with one another, and occasionally with the patients waiting in one of the several booths. Some of the patients are lying on gurneys while they recover from their operations.

A janitor comes in and empties the plastic-lined bins by the counter. A large bunch of keys dangles from his belt, into which a pair of green rubber gloves has been stuck. He is about forty-five, lean, of medium height, walks with a slight stoop, and a pot belly sticks out over a large belt buckle. It is quite possible that his paycheck, including overtime, exceeds that of the nurses.

A doctor walks by, on his way in or out of the operating room. He wears blue scrubs, and on his head a sort of shower cap of elasticized plastic. His glasses are halfway down his nose, and a cloth face mask dangles on his chest. He moves right, and then left, and then right again, as though unsure where he is headed.

All the medical staff wear tennis shoes with thick soles. Sometimes their shoes make little squeaks on the vinyl floor.

One of the nurses is particularly attractive, though no longer young. She moves with a fluid grace through the room, as though on ice skates. It is a pleasure to watch her go about her business.