“That’s some book,” I said to the quiet man beside me. He hardly spoken since I sat down 10 minutes beforehand. “Yeah,” he said, “one of those Americans who write books no Irish publisher would touch. It’s so long.” The book was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
“‘Never heard of him,” I said. “Neither had I,” responded my latest best friend. “It was a case of never mind the quality, see the length. It’s 1,079 pages long. Actually, it’s not bad at all. I’ve been in this place before and knew I’d need something to pass the time. There is no time here.”
Here was the emergency department of one of Dublin’s bigger hospitals, where I accompanied a relative who had taken a turn. It was midweek and the place was full of docile, patient people, waiting. Waiting, waiting. Limbo may have been abolished but it lives, hale and hearty, at an emergency department near you.
It was already clear by the time I spoke to my new friend that to get attention there you needed to be a drunk, a drug addict on a bad trip, or be brought in by ambulance. A boisterous drunk with an English accent was such a nuisance he was soon among the elect, as was a young man in the throes of a grief-stricken trip on his drug of choice.
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His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better
A rough-hewn, large lady ushered from an ambulance by wheelchair asked the young, black security guard “are you Nigerian?” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that,” she said.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the patient majority just grew. “It’d not so bad here, at least it’s bright,” said my friend. He had a chronic condition which erupted occasionally. “You should see what it’s like in (another emergency department).”
He indicated: “Look at your man over there, he’s here since 1983.” It was a joke, but credible. “I’ve read Ulysses, War and Peace, attempted Finnegans Wake and read all PG Wodehouse waiting in Dublin emergency departments,” he said. And he might now, Michael, so he might.
“All that waiting. So much time,” he said, and resumed reading his Infinite Jest as the addicts come and go, dreaming of another blow, while nurse keeps her divine majority in the anteroom which time forgot.
Waiting, from Old English wacian “to be awake/stand by in attendance”.
