Back to a waiting room. Not a metaphorical one, a very real waiting room with its vinyl-covered, wipe-clean seats that you slowly stick to on a warm day.
Here Charon doesn’t man the ferry across the Styx, but the tea trolley. Mournfully it moves its way between pockets of patients, its pilot reminding them “It’s all free,” and pushing half full paper cups of lukewarm milky tea into hands. The trolley is unplugged when in use and so the contents of the urn grows ever cooler. The custard creams in wrappers the same yellow as the toxic warnings on so many medications here have to be pushed harder still. Here, Charon conveys nobody anywhere. The ritual of passage reduced to the ritual of the trolley round, its thin comfort delivered with a gentle but slightly desperate insistence that the incurable participate.
So I sat, waiting, declined the tea with a slight acknowledgment from Charon that I know the ritual but today I did not wish to participate, when somewhere else on the same floor, muffled by heavy hospital doors, a bell was rung.
Read the full essay at:
https://recyclethereal.substack.com/p/the-grammar-of-incurable
