Twenty-six seats...

“The attempt to quantify the human 

condition leads to a barren field.”

– Author unknown

There were 26 seats in the waiting room. They were full, save one.

Upon arriving, my cellmates had already been assigned a number and were waiting to be called. Mine? 276.

There is something unbecoming about being reduced to a number. We all have thoughts…feelings…personalities that are unique. Digital identification in some ways seems like an attempt by the dark side to say, “See, even these people know you are a fake…a fraud…” 

They, of course, know nothing about us, but they think we have no legitimate feelings.  We are less than a sneeze in cosmic time – a gossamer spot withering from existence like the drop of water momentarily sizzling on a hot rock in the desert sun. That's why you only get a number from them.

A bit of an over exaggeration, but nonetheless…

Veteran’s health care has a system…

I got that assigned series of numbers when checking in at the automatic kiosk, a humorless device. With nary a welcoming nod it spit out a small piece of paper upon which was printed in large bold type: "276."

Thank God for those Indian/Muslim scholars who rescued us from Roman numerals - imagine keeping all of those letters straight. 

Even under the Unary notation system, my assignment would have been two hundred and seventy-six diagonally slashed lines (e.g.,///…///). Picture how complicated it would be for folks trying to keep track of their number of slashes so as to not miss their appointment.  

“I’m sorry sir,” the disinterested clerk would say. “You miscounted. You will have to come back tomorrow”.…I digress.

The process…

As I sat down, a mechanical speaker barked, "Number 260, your testing is ready." It would be a while.  For those inmates hard of hearing, two large TV screens displayed their numbers ready to be seen.

The man beside me had a black female Labrador lying at his feet (His number - 274). She was a big one that appeared to be nearly seventy-pounds. There were two black leather handles – one attached to her harness and the second to a neck collar. An attached leash lay slack on the floor and a disengaged muzzle dangled loosely from the side of her head. She had gorgeous wavy black hair. Calling her coat fur would not do justice to its glistening sheen – poetic license.

An ethereal calm drifted from her as she lay quietly at her master’s feet. She exuded a sense of comfort and safety to those of us nearby giving the impression she might be a celestial angel in disguise, sent to bring peace to the world, or at least to the mind of this veteran. 

Unencumbered by the need to have learned an arcane numbering system and other accouterments of her human counterparts, she reclined with ease as though time meant nothing. She was a comfort dog, suggesting volumes as to the vestiges of distant theatres of conflict into which the man had been thrust and partaken…parts of which he had taken home, lodged inconveniently within the confines of his mind.

A man in a wheelchair sat in the open space between me and the seats directly across the way. He was elderly with hearing aids and a prosthetic right leg. I imagined a battle in some distant land that probably seemed essential to somebody at the time. Because he looked to be in my age range, his military service would have been in a jungle somewhere east of Cambodia/Laos and South of China, decades ago. A younger woman was with him, somewhere in her upper thirties, whose once youthful attractiveness had, by now, been covered by too much attention-getting makeup. She looked bored as she kept her eyes on her phone. When she spoke to him, his first response was, turning his head toward her and saying, “Eh?” His voice was weak, and he looked tired, defeated really. His number was 286. He was going to be there awhile.

The chairs were arranged in a U shape. They held bodies whose minds were filled with stories, if honestly told, might edify and horrify. Yet there they sat like libraries with locked doors. There, not for personal revelation, but for maintenance to the machinery in which ‘they' were housed. The older ones sat with vacant stares; the younger glued to their smartphones. All of them taking up space in the familiar hurry up and wait process part and parcel to military custom. Their present mission had no guns, bombs, or battles. That was an earlier day. Now it was a blood draw, or x-ray, or some other health care procedure looking to manage the tendrils of time and gravity that had impacted their physical and mental health.

Time slipped away as I glanced from person to person imaging what had brought these comrades to this communal moment and these uniquely assigned numbers. The man and his Labrador slipped away from my side unnoticed.

"Number 276, please report to the blood lab," a voice boomed over the loudspeaker, bringing me back to reality. I headed through a door where a phlebotomist (needle vampire) took my numbered ticket, asked me for the last four digits of my social security number.

“Sit here,” he said not asking my name and then drew my blood. I asked his name amd how long he had been doing this job.

“Brad,” he said with little enthusiasm. “Been drawing blood since the early nineties.”

Before I knew it, he was done, and I was out the door – three minutes tops. Had I not asked his name and how long he had been working in the field, he would have said nothing save checking to see if I were the correct veteran and asking me to bare my arm.  

There was no, “How has your day gone?” or “How about that great weather that we’ve gotten.” To this harried fellow, who did this mechanical job all day, every working day, I was number 276 and the last four digits of my social security number.

On the way home, I continued to think about those nameless faces, who found themselves with me, sitting long periods of time waiting for their moment of diagnostic bliss.

When I got home that night and walked in the door, Molly said, “Hey Ted, Glad you’re home safe. I was thinking about you.”

No numbers, just a simple, loving greeting. I’m pretty sure that’s the way it ought to be.

-ted