Try to sit in a hospital lobby with bare feet.  Try it in one of the waiting rooms, further within the disinfected sanctum.  Don’t be afraid to utilize the stereotypes of your gender and age.  Underestimate neither the strength of numbers nor the guile of emotional hysterics.  Act with strategy and a sharpened sense of impending reaction by forces of hospital security, for attempts will be made to stop you and your reign of shoeless terror, even if only subtle ones.

Most importantly, learn the ability to assess your skill level in this endeavor.  If you are an elderly woman weeping (in a frantic and elderly fashion,) in the lobby with a posse of family members, you’re way ahead at any hospital in which you choose to set (bare) foot.  Not only will they not kick you out, but the administrative types will probably rush you to a smaller waiting room and offer you tissues by the box or maybe water by the glass.  Tear at your hair and kick your feet chaotically while wailing on the floor and you can earn yourself a complimentary massage and continental breakfast.  I’ve seen it work.

I’ve seen it, but only as a spectator.  As a participant, my qualifications don’t exactly put me in the ring with such an example.  I’m young enough to be held accountable for any emotional outbursts I may have, all of the family members with whom I arrived have now gone somewhere with the doctor, and my hair is far too short to tear.  My patience is threadbare, but enough so that it distracts me, which is too much.

Where my qualifications put me is on the street with damp shoes in my hands.  As such, there is but one consolation: I’m now qualified to have a cigarette.

I see what’s happening and know it before they do.  One driver thinks the other will turn.  The second is adjusting the radio.  The urge to yell, to create some kind of diversion grips me briefly, and I look around for help without knowing why- it’s an instinctive response to crisis, I think.  Under the arched lobby drive-through entry (which reminds me rather of the Ozark airport,) a young-looking hospital orderly crouches before a collapsible gurney, snickering in conversation with a jacketed ambulance driver and another orderly, standing.  None seem to notice the sound of the collision. 

The little kid nearby is making explosion sounds with his mouth and also tch-tch-tsh-tsh machine-gun fire, as the age of rat-tat-at had passed into oblivion generations before.  He has small supermarket soldiers parked on the ledge of the fountain.  To his beaming acknowledgement of serendipity, it is the perfect scale equivalent to jungle or else rainforest warfare.  I don’t see what happens in the next second, but I hear him shriek out fiercely, and then dive headfirst into the fountain.  He goes completely under, and with surprising momentum, as if he had taken a running start and then launched off a springboard.  After a second, the splash subsides and I can’t help wondering what the depth of the fountain might be.

I stop at the second-to-last drag (my attempt at discipline,) and toss the butt.

Signs ask that I keep any food within the cafeteria, but I have no interest in following hospital rules.  I lean against the wall where the hallway to the emergency room’s waiting area meets the boundary of the main lobby and eat my apple, allowing fatigue to control the drift of my attention.  The apple is good, crisp. 

Through the front windows, I can see the smaller of the two laughing orderlies talking with a lady taxi driver and flipping a coin- one of the larger ones, something heavier than a quarter.  There’s a smell of ammonia from somewhere in the hallway irritating my sinuses.  I wonder where his partner is, turn to walk back towards the emergency room, and immediately stumble into a gurney being driven by the selfsame (larger) orderly, biting down on the inside of my cheek as I do so.  The gurney smells of ammonia.  The big guy advises me with professional congeniality to be careful.  He, too, smells of ammonia.  As a congenial afterthought, he suggests that I return with my apple to the cafeteria.

My eyes close up.

I can’t see the orderly, but I know he’s still there, looking at me, awaiting my next move, hoping for a resolved explanation for such a cryptic declaration of body language in response to his suggestion.

Helplessly, I draw a steady breath.

He’s still waiting.

My eyelids snap open as I sneeze enormously in the orderly’s face, spraying a spicy cloud of apple mist everywhere.  He recoils sharply and hurries on his way.  I can smell blood in the mist.

I move on towards my own way, slowly along the lobby balustrade.  It’s stony, anachronistic.  The entire room is, as if it had been purchased and transplanted- foundation to fascia- from a failed Monterrey hotel.  Lots of plants.  Each column is covered at eye-level with framed suitable-for-framing certificates marking the generous contributions of charitable organizations statewide.  Around a quarter of the certificates specify individual benefactors- unsurprisingly, those frames are fancier.  Among them, many of the names are familiar to me.  In fact, I find them oddly familiar as a group, but from where I cannot now say.

I slide to a seated position at the foot of the last column, surveying what little action occupies the rest of the lobby.  The boy from the fountain, freshly redressed in leather slippers, a small robe and large reading glasses (liberated from the old man sleeping on the couch nearby,), is padding back and forth before the assembled ranks of his plastic green task force.  Each soldier awaits his address raptly- a tribute to the discipline of his command.  Missouri has displayed an American flag on the wall behind him, illuminated, and a renegade screw in the central-air vent above is tapping out a smart military cadence against the screened ceiling panel.

The young man halts abruptly and faces his men.  His hands, heretofore buried in the pockets of his robe, emerge- one with a bubblegum cigar, and the other with a book of matches somebody had maybe abandoned on the table of magazines.

I get up and head for the elevators.  No sign says so, but coffee and answers can be found on the sixth floor.