It’s a return to fiction this week. I’ve mined my own, recent experiences with health issues to produce this very short, flash fiction story about someone waiting. When waiting myself, I’ve been lucky to be brilliantly supported by Husband, but many, many of us must face serious health scares and investigations alone. This story is dedicated to those who wait, undergo tests and wait for results without someone by their side…

Clutching the letter, the woman made her way along the endless corridor, up the wide staircase, through the automatic doors, along another corridor and towards ‘Reception’, where she stood in front of the glass in mute compliance to wait her turn. When she reached the desk, she was compelled to ask the receptionist to repeat her question, then decipher what she’d heard in the woman’s heavily accented English. She handed over her paper, standing still while the woman scrutinised her computer screen, feeling a sudden heat of panic engulf her as the receptionist frowned at the screen. Had she got the wrong day? The wrong time? Perhaps she’d come to the wrong department.The place was, after all, a giant maze of corridors,buildings, floors and courtyards.

‘Take a seat please’ the woman instructed and she turned towards the two rows of chairs, pink, shiny seats and wooden arms. On the wall opposite, a TV screen showed the twenty-four hour news, silent with subtitles. She chose a seat at the end of the back row and sank down. Along the row, at the other end there was a couple, heads close together, murmuring in low voices; in front of them a lone woman like herself but much younger, engrossed in her phone.

She sighed. A few years ago there would have been a pile of scruffy, dog-eared magazines- Country Life, Good Housekeeping or Take a Break, all far out of date but providing an undemanding distraction. She glanced around at the walls which displayed a selection of worthy, earnest posters and leaflets advocating this and that and bearing telephone numbers or warning against violent or unruly behaviour towards staff.

Behind the desk, the receptionist had returned to her screen and was scrolling, perusing and tutting. A nurse in a blue tunic and trousers entered, smiling, provoking an anticipatory response from the four waiting, the attendees; but as the nurse merely picked up a folder from the desk and disappeared through the doors they all slumped back into their waiting activity, or lack of it.

Outside the waiting room, a corridor led to a series of small, intimate rooms, their open doors offering an occasional glimpse of more desks and chairs. She could hear doors opening and closing away up the corridor, blue-clad nurses or someone wearing a lanyard striding purposefully away, carrying papers. Then a door closed and a couple passed the waiting room, shrugging coats on.

She closed in on herself, stilled, looked down at her clasped hands. She was accustomed to waiting, having done a lot of it as a child, when she’d been compelled to attend Sunday morning service in church with her father, perching on a hard pew as communion stretched on and on, an interminable queue of devout parishioners, hopeful of eternal life. Here, in this waiting room they all shared this hope too, although they wouldn’t be depending on God to provide it.

Remembering her yoga breathing exercises, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the long breaths in and out. It was soporific after an interminable, wakeful night and she caught herself drifting, drifting until a different blue-clad nurse appeared in the doorway, causing everyone to look up again.

‘Victoria Hegly?’ she announced, consulting her clipboard. The couple at the end of the row stood, looked at each other and followed her. ‘I’m Simone’, she heard the nurse say, ‘I’m one of the nurses here.’

She resumed her unmoving meditation. Secondary school- that had been a monument of boredom; the assemblies when they’d had to sit on the hard, cold parquet floor, speech days even worse as the prize giving laboured on, seeming to be never-ending. The lessons themselves had been mind-numbing, with teachers entering, sitting enthroned on a raised platform and dictating notes for their luckless pupils to write in ‘rough’ books and learn. It would not do these days! Children could not be allowed to be bored for one minute, needing distaractions in the form of colouring or screen activities in restaurants and even, as in her grandson’s home, at the dining table.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a couple of women entering the room, one older than the other- mother and daughter perhaps? The younger woman leant in towards the desk, they waited, were told to sit, choosing seats by the window, which overlooked the busy car park. She thought it just as well the car park tickets were paid as you left, or how on Earth would you know how much time to purchase?

The other lone woman was summoned by a new, smiling nurse. Nurses have changed, she thought, since she’d last had reason to be here in the building. It was forty years ago. The nurses had been stern and authoritarian as they cared for the new mothers during and after childbirth. She’d been well looked after but in her post-natal, emotional turmoil they’d seemed hard and unfeeling, admonishing her for her ignorance and ineptitude. Now, here, they smiled, proffered tissues, held her hand. Times had changed.

Inside her bag her phone vibrated and she reached down to withdraw it. There was a text from Neil. She frowned. ‘Thinking of you’ it said. ‘How did it go?’ She turned the phone off and replaced it in her bag. Neil wanted to help more than she wanted him to. Neil was for companionship, evenings out, an occasional meal or a night in with a film, sometimes overnight stays, nothing more. She wished she hadn’t mentioned the appointment now, as his desire to be ‘there for her’ added an extra layer of obligation to the anxiety of waiting and a frisson of guilt into the mix.

She was zipping the bag up when the first nurse reappeared with her clipboard. ‘Eleanor Gatiss?’ she asked the room, scanning those remaining. She nodded. ‘That’s me.’

‘I’m Christine. I’m one of the nurses. It’s this way.’

She bent to pick up her bag, straightened her back and smoothed down her skirt before following the young woman in blue out into the corridor towards the small, intimate consulting room…

Want to read more fiction from Grace’s later ego, Jane Deans? Novels: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend, available to download or purchase. Visit my writer page: Janedeans.com