Spring Rainstorm--A poem

Spring rainstorm last night
found me driving a friend
to the emergency room
of a major Chicago hospital.

Big city emergency room
predictably
enveloping us
into endless waiting.


I was not the main event last night.

I was  a supporting character,
so I had the luxury of  waiting as a spectator,
watching the waltz of life
that paraded in and out of
the dim, stale, oatmeal-tinted waiting area.
The only spots of color
were ER red neon
and slick educational posters about HIV.

I watched the waltz from my swaybacked plastic chair--
The wheezing elderly man with a grubby bandage covering half his face.
The scared and squabbling parents of a screaming toddler.
The worried Chinese grandparents who brought in their feverish grandchild, but who spoke
only Mandarin.
The exhausted-amused parents whose son had shoved a ball bearing up his left nostril.

A pre-teen boy with a broken foot.
A basketball player with a broken finger.
A young girl with strep.
Tiny feverish babies.

And us.

The partners in this dance were the staff members-
nurses, doctors, EMT's, firefighters-
who stepped into and out of each individual swirl
on the ER dance floor.

This dance was far more familiar to them, and each of them dealt
with the rise and fall of fear/pain/anger/sorrow
in his or her own way.

Ambivalence.
Empathy.
Brusque efficiency.
Humor.
Compassion.

It was a dance with no beginning and no end
as the dancers themselves appeared then departed
leaving to be eventually and inevitably blown
into the spring rainstorm
outside.

CHM 3/2016