It is five of five in the morning and I am hanging my head over the sofa from behind it, about to awaken a sleeping chef until I realize he is wide awake. I am driving him to an early appointment at the doctor’s office in an hour for a little thing, so it is time to get moving. He is not fine, he tells me when I ask.

But not because what I think.

Instead, because Scout-the-Goldapeake Retriever has kept him up all night, pacing, pacing, poking, trembling some, because the world order has been upset by a routine that’s all bockety, disturbed by a man where he is Not Supposed To Be. A thoughtful man who decided he’d sleep out there instead of in here so as not to disturb his wife during what he imagined might be a restless night. He shows me photographic evidence of this weirdo canine.

It was wrong-all-wrong, insists the dog.

Anyway, we’re up.

At the doctor’s office it is still dark outside and inside the building, where the staff will not flip on the lights and unlock the front door until the precise stroke of 6:30 am, because that is how they roll. So we sit in the car, all of us who were kind enough to be punctual, and some of us listen to the man on NPR explain how he had to wait extra long for his name to bubble to the top of the organ donor list because of the color of his skin. Funny story to listen to in a doctor’s parking lot, it occurs to me. We are all waiting, some with more urgency than others.

Anyway, we’re up and we’re here, I the designated driver for the patient patient, who will be a bit woozy when they’re finished with him.

Inside the building the lights are too bright, almost brutal. I settle into a chair next to a table, where I have set my tumbler of strong black coffee and my tiny handbag and my cell, along with the printout commanding me to answer my phone when it rings because if I don’t it’ll mess up their schedule back there behind closed doors and will be all my fault.

They clearly do not like being kept waiting.

I have a collection of short stories in my lap. But before I crack it open to the page I marked with a postcard, I glance around the mainly empty space, tones of beige and gray and plate glass windows that look out onto the porte cochère and beyond it the parking lot, still dark. (A streetlight illuminates a thick film of pine pollen all over my rear windshield, time for the car wash I suppose.) There is a shiny linoleum floor under new chairs upholstered in something-or-other vinyl; the chairs are two-toned and a couple of them are oversized. The lobby is divided into two halves separated by a pony wall; you bear left for a visit and right for a procedure—we bore right. There is a giant television mounted high on the wall, one in each space; I can hear them both, each tuned to a different station, and instantly find this irksome.

There is no coffee, and no water—I can see the bubbler attached to a wall over there with a sign taped over it, a lingering reminder we’re not wholly out of the pandemic woods, I imagine. Nobody here is masked.

Most of the others seated in the room are waiters like me, waiting, waiting, waiting for our phones to ring as instructed. Waiting for our woozy charges. I start playing a waiting room game. What if you were trapped inside this room with this particular collection of people for days or weeks, unable to escape—waiting indefinitely. What then. After you divided your snacks equally amongst yourselves (I brought only a single Kind bar) and raided the staff fridge, and somebody figured out how to flip on the bubbler, how would you get along. What if you were not only not kindred spirits, but you found each other insufferable, what then?

There is a kind-looking older woman in the corner who like me has her cell phone and a book, but has abandoned both and is now knitting; maybe she is alright. A woman to my left is wearing a sweatshirt plastered with the name of a local beach, in sequins, and is staring into space; not alright. There is a couple sitting at 90 degrees to my right speaking sotto voce about the dog hair on their clothing. Ah-HA. Kindred spirits, maybe; I’d probably stick with them. Or the doctors. Yes, I could carry on an intelligent conversation with them, ask them all kinds of candid questions and get the dog’s-honest truth for answers, maybe. C’mon, tell me, do you think after all these years I could possibly still be allergic to penicillin? Or is that something my pediatrician invented to cover his ass, liability and all?

On the other side of the pony wall a man is making a weird groaning noise. Not like he is in pain, but instead like he has developed this annoying habit throughout his life and the people around him have not had the nerve to tell him just how vexing this is. Or they have and he said bugger off. I would avoid that man like plague in my trapped-inside scenario, position myself behind the couple coated in dog hair.

This makes my mind wander back to Scout-the-Goldapeake Retriever, at home right now, probably all comfortably asnooze on our bed with his head on Chef David’s pillow. And how glad I am to have today off to be the designated driver and to sit with The Chef to make sure he does not get into any mischief for the balance of the afternoon. I hate these godawful chairs, which are not made for the human form. My hips and knees hurt and there is nothing to do about that so I jam the folded phone-answering instruction paper next to the postcard in the back of the book and bury myself in it and against all odds manage to tune out the sound of two televisions on a collision course, and float away on a delicious bit of fiction.

When my phone rings a couple of hours later, I in fact miss it somehow, but I do see the ‘missed call’ alert exactly when it lights up the screen. I call back and a nurse answers and asks me to pull the car around to the front, which I am only too glad to do.

On the ride home The Chef reads his discharge papers aloud to me in agonizing detail and makes me giggle. “Do not operate heavy machinery. Do not make major decisions.” We laugh about medical terms that sound alike but that mean the opposite, and I tell him the story of a Gary Larson cartoon where two cavemen are standing in the cave with clubs in their hands and mouths agape at the spectacle of a third, who has smashed head-on into a rock formation. The caption goes something like, Oooooh, Grog hit head on dang! Now which kind stick up, and which kind hang down?

Without skipping a beat, The Chef giggles and says, stalagmite, stalactite.

Yeah, he’s just fine. Later, I tell him, we’ll see if you remember having this conversation.

We stop for bagels and eat them at home outside on the screen porch while we swill fresh coffee. We talk about the sequence of events we anticipate to unfold in our ongoing porch makeover. But first, we agree, the furniture cushions need steaming. Shall we buy a steamer? I ask. Sure, go ahead, he says. Does this count as a major decision? I ask. We both giggle while I add a compact upholstery steamer to the cart on my phone.

Before too long, The Chef grows impatient. He has chores to do, isn’t supposed to, but insists he’ll take it easy, won’t climb any ladders, kind of thing. I consent to this plan, promising myself to keep an eye on him.

Someday Scout will be gone and so will we and so will these days when we can just press pause and not worry too much about anything, glad to be alive and well for now. I’d like to be kept waiting an eternity for someday.