I spent a couple hours at the local
Urgent Care on Saturday morning. I didn’t make it there until well after 9:00
and the small waiting room was packed: a young couple with a baby, a toddler, and
a little boy no older than 5, an elderly couple, a woman in her twenties
holding a small waste basket under her chin, a man in his thirties, and an
older man who looked to be around 50 or 60. As I waited my turn, a woman wearing
sweats, flip flops, and an over-sized man’s coat came in the door, signed the
register and sat in one of the only remaining seats in the waiting room. In my sinus infected stupor, I stared at a TV
hung high on the wall. The lady on the weather channel was describing the
devastating damage from the tornadoes that had screamed through Indiana the
night before.
“Sheila,” the receptionist called. The
woman in sweats went up to the front window.
“We can’t accept your insurance so if
you want to see a doctor, it will cost sixty dollars.”
The
woman sighed in defeat and turned and left the doctor’s office. Just then, the
young woman with the wastebasket began throwing up.
A nurse opened the door that led to the
examining rooms.
“Diana,” she called.
My diagnosis was a double ear infection
and a sinus infection. The Urgent Care had an in-house pharmacy which saved me
a trip to CVS. I walked out of the Urgent Care with my antibiotics feeling both
relieved and guilty. On the way home I kept thinking about the woman in sweats.
I wondered how sick she was. I wondered if she would return with $60.00 or if she ended up not going to a doctor at all.
