The waiting room was almost empty when I walked in, which should have been a red flag. But I took it as good luck; I wouldn’t have to wait in a long line to get my vaccination.
There’s something about getting a vaccination that makes me want to get the whole thing over with quickly.
A young woman and her daughter were tucked in a corner of the waiting room under the ficus tree, almost as if they were trying to hide. The woman gave me an anxious look and pulled her daughter closer, and whispered something in her ear. Probably something like, “Don’t go near that strange man who just walked in; he might have leprosy.”
Which of course I didn’t have. I didn’t even have COVID, as far as I could tell. Although practically everyone else seemed to have it.
I was perfectly healthy, in fact. And I intended to stay that way. Which is why I had come.
I settled in a chair at the opposite end of the room and glanced at the stack of magazine sitting on the nearby side table. (Although I was tempted to go over and sit right next to the woman who thought I had leprosy.) The magazine atop the stack was Scientific American, sporting a cover story, “Is There Life After Death?”
I looked at the next magazine down, and found another cover story, “Vaccine Side Effects, Revealed”.
And then the next one: “Behind the Wisconsin Meat Packing Plant Outbreak”.
Obviously, I wasn’t meant to read any of the magazines.
I feigned a lack of interest in the whispering woman clutching her daughter, and pretended to focus, instead, on the large poster pinned to the opposite wall, which featured a green-colored Coronavirus with little legs and a frightened cartoon face, running away from a gigantic smiling nurse wielding a big shotgun. The poster bore the message, “Take the Shot”.
The frightened virus reminded me, for some reason, of the woman over in the corner.
The white-painted office door opened, and a nurse stepped into the room, holding a clipboard. She addressed the frightened woman, with a lilting voice.
“Ms. Funk? Did you also want to get the vaccine? And your daughter?”
A bewildered look came across the woman’s face. “Where’s my husband?” she asked.
“Mr. Funk is done with the procedure, but he was feeling a bit faint afterwards, so we’ve kept him in the examination room. He lying down, quietly. But we can take you now. And your daughter. In a different examination room.”
The woman was squeezing her daughter so tightly, I wondered if the little girl could breath.
“I can wait until my husband feels better. We weren’t planning on a vaccination for our daughter. You know, children aren’t really suffering from this. Or so we’ve heard.”
“Well, suit yourself,” the nurse smiled. “But that will put you back at the end of the line.”
I met the woman’s eyes, and nodded my head, and it seemed like we connected for a moment. I was the only other person in the waiting room, so ‘the line’ — at the end of which she would be waiting — was a rather short one.
When the woman made no further reply, the nurse turned to me. “Mr. Cannon? You’re next in line. Please follow me.”
We walked down a surprisingly long hallway, lined with doors on either side, and at one point, we passed an open door where a man was lying face-up on an examination table. At least, I assumed it was a man, to judge by his shoes. I wondered if this was Mr. Funk, and why he would be covered with a white sheet… including over his face. That seemed odd.
The nurse opened one of the doors and I saw a room identical to the one I’d just seen, with an examination table, a small sink, and not much else.
“Here you go, Mr. Cannon. If you would please take off all your clothes, except for your shoes.”
I gave a little laugh. “I’m not here for an examination. I just wanted to get the vaccination.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the nurse agreed.
“So, you are just going to give me a shot. In my arm. Just a vaccination.”
“Yes, that’s right. Just the vaccination. But not in the arm. The needle would go right through your arm and come out the other side. We deliver the vaccine directly into each of your main organs, starting with the heart and lungs. Liver. Stomach. Colon. We need to have you take off all your clothes. Except your shoes. We don’t vaccinate the feet.”
I looked at the nurse’s smiling face, and realized she was the nurse in the poster.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.