There has to be a better way to deliver medical care. ER waiting rooms are just another broken part of our system.
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Nigel understood that what he was doing in recounting his everyday activities and observations was subverting most people’s understanding of what was possible for a person with his condition. He mentioned this frequently throughout the narrative—though he never used a verb such as subvert.
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There was surely some apprehension people felt while waiting for medical care, but people often chatted with the front desk or each other and in a small town, it wasn’t unusual to run into someone you knew.
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The Chair in the Courtyard

When I met my friend Rose she’d been a window for several years.  She spoke lovingly about her late husband Bob and I soon learned he’d been her second husband.

One day over lunch Rose and I were reminiscing about our past lives and she told me this story.

She’d been very young when she married the first time,  and she and her husband lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 11th floor of a small building,  their windows facing a lovely courtyard.

After the birth of their first child they needed more space and planned to stay in their building but move to a larger apartment on the 9th floor that had recently been vacated.

But when Rose’s mother heard their plan she worried.  ”It’s bad luck to move from a higher floor to a lower floor in the same building.”  she told them.

Rose held no such superstitious beliefs,  the new lease had been signed,  and the movers hired.  But to placate her mother Rose asked what they could do to ward off the bad luck.

“Take a chair from your apartment,  bring it down to the courtyard and sit in it.   Then bring it back upstairs.”  her mother instructed.  And as silly as they thought that was,  they did it.

As I laughed at her story,  Rose looked serious for a moment.   “But that apartment did bring me bad luck – we divorced.”  she said.

“But since then you’ve surely had your share of good luck as well.”  I said.

And Rose smiled,  “Yes I did, I met Bob!”

Rose’s mother,  we agreed,  had been right about that chair in the courtyard after all!

– Dana Susan Lehrman