Waiting Room Anguish

Sitting in a waiting room this week, like countless other people before me in a myriad of locations everywhere, I entertain myself with noticing how someone has decorated  and furnished this particular waiting room. 

Fairly sturdy chairs.  A reasonable number of chairs, each three making a settee.  A TV in one corner playing the news.  A muted, leafy green color.  A series of pictures, hanging in a row on the walls, featuring flowers.  One picture appears missing.  The paint is a pale yellow in the vacant spot. Wonder where the picture is, and why it has not been replaced.  Fake plants for ambience.  A couple of magazines on an end table.  An upscale wooden desk, rather than an office desk.   No chair in front of the desk to use, as well as nothing on the desk.  The desk looks out of place. 

Why is there a naked desk in this waiting room?  What purpose does it serve?  Maybe someone intended to put brochures there?  Wait.  I’ve got it.  I know what happened.  The pieces are all falling into place.  I can visualize it now.

The unobtrusive, yet mysterious, desk hides a blood stain.  Yes, a blood stain.  A murder definitely unfolded here in this exact spot.  Someone ran out of patience with their loved one, and cracked.  Maybe the victim had complained incessantly, driving the relative over the edge, or perhaps the victim revealed a secret before the telling lab work came back, that the stranger in town running the floral shop, worked for the CIA, and the baby was his. 

Enraged and agitated for whatever reason, the relative obviously grabbed the picture with the sturdy, oak frame off the wall, and beat the victim’s head in until blood seeped from the multiple gashes into the carpet.  Blood stains are not easy to remove, and that would certainly explain the missing picture, too -- a convenient and lethal weapon in a crime of passion.

The waiting room desk sits calmly, hiding the aftermath of a grisly scene.  Few people notice it’s there or think about why it is there, and definitely they do not question the lack of a chair, or even a picture.  To them, it’s just another waiting room.  Certain professions need people who notice details. Perhaps, I could grow up to be a writer?