It’s a Seiko wall model hung in the middle of the waiting room. The battery is still working, but the second hand is stuck. It jitters in one position, halfway between the 11 and the 12 on the dial. I keep forgetting, and every time I look up, I think, “It’s still 12:45?”
After looking up at the clock for the umpteenth time I start to wish someone would fix it. I am half-tempted to fetch it down myself and peak into the insides. In the end, I don’t, but I imagine what my downstairs neighbor might have done with it. He could fix anything. I remember bringing him one of our bedside clocks that was slow and kept losing five minutes every day. I knocked on his door and a moment later he opened it and smiled. I was just going to drop it off, but he told me to come in, it would only take a minute. He made the pun as he held up the clock and winked at me.
His apartment had an entire wall filled with different tools. He put the clock on his workbench and selected a small screwdriver. Once the clock was open, he peered inside using a small flashlight.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. I stepped closer and looked down into the clock. The gears were clicking and turning; I couldn’t see a problem. He could, though. His old eyes were sharper than mine. He nudged at a gear that was buried down deep in the workings of the clock. A few moments later he clicked the cover back into place and handed it back to me.
“Good as new,” he said.
He died last year. The word passed up through the apartment building, like a cold wind. Soon everybody was down on the first floor. It was the bus driver who found his body. “His heart just gave out,” the ambulance nurse said after he arrived a few minutes later. “Sorry to say, it’s not uncommon for someone at his age.”
Why am I thinking about this? Oh, that’s right. When the doctor comes back out, I’m going to tell him about the broken clock. It’s an unnecessary additional burden that weighs on those of us who are out here in the waiting room.
I hold my wife’s hand and we wait.
Comments