No One’s Fault
︎︎︎ Calvin Cummings
︎ Apr 26, 2025
Been in this situation a bunch, sitting in a waiting room, my wife somewhere back there, getting looked at. Bike accidents, orbital fractures, too many seizures to count, and now, more than likely, a broken nose. We were playing with our son. Running up and down the stairs and the hall. We ran into each other. Except the seizures, every nurse at the counter of these places looks at me like I hit her, like we’re there because of me. I don’t know how to act. How do you make yourself look when you don’t want to look like you hit your wife? The answer is there is nothing to do but wait and be seen waiting and hope that that is enough. The few times I’ve been allowed back, we go from room to room and we wait there too. We try not to talk about bills or what it means that the doctor said this, but not that, but not this. Later, we pray like everyone else, with our heads bowed and hands together, like we don’t believe in it, like who told us this works? I’m angry enough now that I could hit someone, and I think the nurses can tell. I think this is my big problem. That people are right about me, but in the wrong way. The door swings open and my wife walks out, the nurse peering over her shoulder. Her nose isn’t broken. “They’re saying I have a deviated septum now though,” she explains. We walk to the car. Christmas lights twinkle from the outer awning of the Urgent Care. A family in pajamas slips out behind us holding prescription bags. Melting snow rings the lot. Driving home, she can’t stop laughing. She even starts crying she’s laughing so hard. She traces my neck and shoulders with her fingers while we wind through roads I’ve driven a thousand times, back to my mom’s house. Everyone’s in front of the TV when we get back. I stand behind a couch and watch too. A new year stumbles towards us from the future. What I’m saying is there are rooms we have been pushed through the doors of where we have seen things only we have seen.