A few pictures or something. Even a cheap paper calendar. It wouldn't take much effort to do something with these blank walls - to relieve the dullness, the monochrome pale green expanse spilling (spilling? No, that's too dynamic a word) - laying across the concrete floor. Why are these places so drab? You resign yourself to the institutional, uninspired drabness of such rooms, this room in particular, in which you are periodically deposited, to wait.


To wait.

A weak, insipid daylight creeps, oozes through the high windows. Not sunlight. Not shafts or rays of vitalising gold warmth. Just a vaguely metallic cloud-glare - muffled light. It seems to accentuate the loudness of a steel chair-leg scraping on the floor, of the chunk….chunk….chunk of the clock - also waiting.

You move. You fidget. You scratch. A heavy expellation of air through the nose - a nasal sigh.

Chunk.

Chunk.

Chunk.

Chunk.

Your eye tries to trace the outline of the window bars. Down one side of each bar and up the other. But the outlines appear blurred, fuzzy, hard to focus on.

Chunk.

Chunk.

Chunk.

Two chairs - plastic seats and steel tube legs. A flimsy deal table - formica top, collapsible steel legs. A clock. Plastic. Battery-operated. Two iron-clad doors - one behind you, the one you entered by, you were ushered through by the silent guard who appraised you, optically frisked you before showing you in here to wait. The other door in the wall facing you - the door that leads to the interior of this place - to the sad and savage innards, to the despair of more waiting - interminable waiting.

Your eyes no longer focus on the objects, on the green walls, the black iron bars, the iron doors, the iron chairs. You gaze unseeingly into the middle distance, eyes not really functioning. Ears now not hearing, ignoring, denying the chunk … chunk of the clock.

Your mind is running over a list of household trivialities - must remember to ring the plumber about that leak in the bath. Hope the job's not too expensive. Will just have to cut back a bit on food and petrol for a few weeks if it is. Have to pick up some bread on the way home from here. The car's due for a warrant and there are two bald tyres on it - oh well, have to borrow one from Jimmy - and hope the spare's got more tread on it - and get him to change them both.

Mind not even able to concentrate on these snatches of life - slipping into torpor - a limbo haze of waiting - flat green walls - waiting.

A sudden stand - legs push the chair back - metallic scrape-screech on the floor. Trying to snap out of the numb stupor. Walk around the room. Get a closer look at the bars, at the door, at the chalky, flaky paint of the walls. Try to breathe, try to reclaim the power of concentration, even of thought.

Up closer, the physical drabness of the room is even more dispiriting - bars rusting, blackened with age; paint layered and powdery, encrusted with ancient dirt, grime, blood?

Caked dust of neglect fills the corners, swept there by cursory brooms. Cracks unrepaired and crumbling - in the floor, the walls. Ceiling-corner cobwebs hang in lethargy - forgotten, unnoticed. This is just a waiting room. A temporary way-station, a viewing chamber. It needs no brightness, no cheer, no personality. What happens here is never joyous, never bright - only sad meetings of people who don't know how to start, the one trying to appear cheerful, positive, optimistic, as if everything is OK, the other enduring it, giving brief replies, unable to communicate what the other really wants to know: “What's it LIKE?”, always afraid of becoming less and less human, dysfunctional, inert. Withdrawing more and more with every visit.
And the visitor, at first not knowing what to say. Rehearsing whole conversations in the car beforehand. Voice drying up once inside this room. Small talk seems somehow irrelevant here. Talk of the weather, the All Blacks' latest game, politics, all dissolve into meaninglessness.

What it all comes down to is waiting. One waiting interminably for hours, days, months, years to tick by - time in which one's pulse slows, one's thought processes slow, one's vitality dwindles gradually into dormancy. The other waiting for life to be complete again, for the missing person to return to fill the gap - in the day, in the bed, in her life.

Both waiting for the visit to be over. All news and talk finished with in the first few minutes, but a sense of propriety or appropriateness which won't allow the visitor to leave until visiting time is over.

Both watching the clock. Both hearing, louder and louder, chunk. Chunk. Chunk. CHUNK.

How are you? What's it LIKE? How can you bear it? Do you know what it's like for me? I can't stand it! Words screaming in her brain - screaming to be let out - spoken.

A kind of panic seizes you - you feel it rising in your guts - you almost explode. Outwardly you flush a little. He doesn't notice. His eyes don't meet yours - they're not shifty, just downcast - unfocussed. He seems dulled. He is becoming a shadow. You regain control. You're calm. Waiting.

How's the - you stop suddenly, fighting to hold back the panic which has flooded back in a rush - FOOD? rushes out too loud, with the tears.
His face creases in concern. He leans forward - he doesn't know what to do. You hide in your handbag rummage. His hand on your shoulder is spotted by the guard - stern look. His hand drops. What's wrong?

It's -

nothing -

Nothing -

I'm -

OK -

Sorry.

Tissue wipe. Little laugh-sob. Wipe. Breathe. Brave laugh.

Sorry.

A pause.

You breathe deeply. Control regained.

It's OK.

What?

The food.

Oh That.

Silence.

You want to let go, to unburden yourself. You want to throw yourself into his arms, to let it all out on his shoulder. You want to dissolve in tears and let him support you, carry you.

But you can't.

Not here. Not in this…..this…..place. Thus is drabness; this chill, with the steely-eyed guard watching you, scrutinising you.

You hold it all in: the worry, the fear, the need.

Soon the visit will be over. The guard will step forward. He will haul himself slowly to his feet. The steel chair will scrape. You will stand also, and watch as he walks back through the iron door, head down, shoulders forward. You will turn and push the other door open, walk the few steps along the corridor, through the building's outer door, and outside into the world.

And so it happens. And the hurt inside is sharper now. The empty space is even emptier.

With a deep breath to make you feel brave, but which fails to, you walk towards the car.

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