One day last spring I had to be in the ER waiting room while somebody was being seen; I just know it wasn’t me.  A lady in a wheelchair was pushed up to the intake desk; she had fallen and maybe cracked a bone or sprained a muscle. She was elderly in the way I will be in, oh, 10, years and her husband looked a little older. He was slender, casually well-dressed and poised. It seemed like a regular visual encounter in a waiting room.

AND THEN, their two twin daughters came in. They were very tall, very slender, very professionally coiffed and dressed in designer-like black dresses. They were accessorized and they were probably somewhere in their thirties. One could have imagined them showing up in a Manhattan ER and being quickly escorted to the VIP section – which of course isn’t listed on the directory, but exists.

I was short, squat  and dressed in the work clothes I had been wearing when we had to head off our patient. They were not, as I have said.

They also stood in the waiting room as if no one else were there; I suppose they didn’t want to embarrass us by indicated we had been noticed. Or they were very snooty. I found myself wondering, since their mother did not seem to be in pain or distress, if they had taken time to dress for the occasion.

I think I am being unfair; I just would have liked it had they shown some awareness of an old woman, wincing in discomfort as she waited – of the little boy standing there all nervous while his mother held his splotched and crying sister.

This was quite awhile ago, and I still think of it now and then. I think I would have liked it had I not been jealous of their looks, icy cold though they were. But, rats. that’s me and it doesn’t look like I’m going to change.