When I was around seven years old my family was visiting
Chicago for the summer. My khala just had twins, so obviously everyone in
Chicago wanted to visit. However, the birth was complicated and my cousins were
in ICU, and my aunt was recovering. The hospital had a huge fountain that went
all the way up to the glass ceiling, the sunlight reflected on the water
creating some semblance of a rainbow in the middle of the hospital lobby.
I can recall walking in then everything afterward is almost
a blur, and somehow I ended up being stuck in this waiting area on the prenatal
floor, with my grandpas sister-in-law. She is a emotional woman, rarely goes
anywhere without her husband, but seeing that he was awaiting a court date in
Jordan at the time, she had to adapt.
The waiting area near the reception desk had an overall beige
vibe and was poorly lit. I was shivering in my t-shirt and jeans, the AC was on
full blast to combat the sweltering heat of a Chicago summer. Nanu was
arguing with the receptionist, trying to convince the nurse on duty to allow
her to see her niece. I wasn’t paying attention to the commotion at the desk, I
was more or less focused on not freezing to death right then and there on that
plastic bench, when suddenly I hear my name being called, “Sofia! Come here and please explain to this woman that I want to see
Mahi.”
I slowly dragged myself up to my feet, my
mind dull.
Nanu then said mostly to herself, “I haven’t been able to see her, I don’t know if she’s okay, I don’t
know what’s going on!”, then to
me, “Sofia can you just tell the nurse
what I want, she wont listen to me.”
“Ahem, okay…. Ma’am I
am going to have to tell for the umpteenth time you cannot visit her right
now.” The nurse in question was looking back and forth between us two, with her
pencil thin eyebrows furrowed and her arms crossed.
In response, Nanu raised a fist to the heavens, “I tell you
that I want to see her, she is my daughter, let me see! Why I can’t see her?
You don’t tell me why! Child, tell her, can
you just ask her what is happening? No one tells me anything…this country is a
mess…no one respects….”
I was out of place, I didn’t have any experience translating
for anyone.
With my face burning despite the frigid temperature of that
godforsaken waiting room, I looked up at the nurse, “Ma’am, uhh, why can’t we visit
her?”.
The nurse looked down at me with a frown and huffed, “As I’ve
said numerous times before, she’s incredibly incapacitated, and policy says only
immediate relations can visit her at the moment.” She frowned even more and
squinted her eyes, “Are you her immediate relations?”
I turned towards Nanu and asked, “Uhh, are you immediate relations?”
“What does that mean?”
“it means like are you, uh, related to her or-”
“No. It means, is she her mother?”
I turned back to the nurse and said no.
“Aha well that’s a shame isn’t it?”, she plastered on a
sympathetic smile, “Hm, well according to hospital policy, I am going to have
to ask you to step away from the desk and wait.”
She dropped back down at her desk with a satisfied
expression, effectively ignoring us.
Nanu pounced. “What
happened? What’s the room number?”
“I don’t know, like, she’s very sick and you’re not
immediate relations-“
“Child, what is the
room number?”
“I don’t know! She didn’t give it to me, Khala is sick and
you can’t visit her just yet. We have to wait-”
“Wait? Wait?!” her eyes flashed, “This woman wants me to wait! After all this time? All I have been
doing is waiting! For the past three hours I’ve been waiting!”
“What did you tell her?”,
She stared hard at me, “I asked you such
a simple thing….”
I frankly, stopped listening after that. I felt embarrassed and
slightly angry. At the time, I thought, what did she expect from me? I was only
seven, it’s not my fault I had the language but not the confidence to talk to a
stranger.
She stormed back to the desk and this continued for another
twenty minutes or until an ‘immediate relation’ came out to get us from the
waiting room.
Everyone ended up healthy and happy in the end. So yeh wlweklj
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