Sandra Gaynor
Chicago, Illinois, United States

What is waiting? As a child, waiting was, for me, a time to be angry with my father. He found it impossible to be on time for any event. When the rest of the family was dressed and sitting with coats on, he was thinking about showering and shaving and possibly getting dressed. From fifteen years of waiting for my father, I developed a chronic anxiety of being late and, just possibly, missing something.

In adulthood, I am having a different experience of what it means to wait, caused by spending an inordinate amount of time in one particular waiting room. I am not learning patience, nor expanding my mind, nor distracting myself with crocheting.

But I am waiting.

It is the very cold winter of 2016. I am in the waiting room of a refugee health clinic in Chicago. This is the healthcare entry point for every international refugee passing through the major resettlement organizations. Waiting here is a suspension in time for me.

There is one large, rectangular waiting room, built of icy cold cement blocks painted incarceration-gray. Two windows frame the southeast corner, but the windows are not tight, and the winter wind blows in from around their perimeters. These windows provide the only light in the grayness. Next to the entry is the security guard’s station. The guard is constantly on his cell phone, attempting to use his paid “wait time” productively.

Three sides of the walls have gray plastic bucket chairs that do what I thought was impossible—they magnify the drabness of the room and dramatically raise the numbing level of waiting.

The fourth short wall sequesters the three-clinic staff manning the telephones and charts behind five-foot-high sheets of plastic. Mounted to the ceiling is a TV playing reruns of the 1960s show The Rifleman on continuous loop.

Right now, there are ten adults and thirteen children in the room. Four different languages are spoken: Arabic, Urdu, Nepalese, and an African dialect. I am the only English speaker in the waiting room. I am the only one not talking.

The noise level is deafening. It is mostly women who come with the children and the occasional husband. They are cold and tired from the long bus trips to get here. Yet they must feel that this gray Guantanamo is a safe place, as the minute they come through the door, they surrender all interest or control over their children.

As soon as a woman hears another speaking her language, they are magnetically attracted to each other, children forgotten. For a refugee woman here, waiting is being home once again, being with the familiar, finding comfort in talking. Talking is the respite from all that is foreign to them outside of the clinic.

Language is such a challenge here. The clinic staff are primarily of Russian descent, and they are there to run the business of screening the health status of all of the refugees. There sometimes is a translator for Swahili and some of the Indian and Arabic languages. Most often, the responsibility for interpreting the medical banter between doctors and patients falls to the children. The grammar school children are kept home to interpret at the clinic visit. I am with a fourth-grader who has been here six months, but is responsible for explaining to the doctor why her mother cannot sleep at night.

Most of the children are babies or toddlers. There are no toys or games, nothing to distract them while they wait. And they are here, waiting for hours. Appointments for simple vaccinations last two hours. Every thirty minutes, a staff member steps from behind the plastic wall and yells, “Quiet, we can’t hear on the phones!”

This group of children, especially the boys, seem to engage in a lot of aggressive behavior towards both their siblings and other children. They push, shove, make each other cry, and constantly run through the room. This may be a manifestation of post-traumatic stress, or it may just be boredom.

Every child, even those young enough to be unsteady on their legs, has a Tootsie Pop in their mouth. Sugar is an affordable, portable comfort source for refugees. Dental problems are rife within the group today. A tiny four-year-old of Arabic background asks me something. As she speaks, I can see that every tooth she has sparkles with a silver filling. The Tootsie Pop finds its way back into her mouth.

Rhiannon is eager to help her mother, but her own command of the language is novice and her understanding of it even less. I care for baby Sara. Their mother goes into the exam room three times: once for weighing, once for vital signs, and finally to see the doctor. Each time she goes to the exam room, she removes her winter coat, sweater, blouse, long Arabic gown, stockings, and boots. Each time she returns to the waiting room, she is fully clothed—zipped, buttoned up with hijab, winter coat, scarf, gloves, and boots.

I know there must be some coordination to the clinic patient flow, but it is hampered by the constant interruptions to keep down the noise and chaos in the waiting room. I wait with the baby, the fourth-grader, and their mother for three and a half hours for the mother to be cleared for a measles vaccination.

The refugee women are all experienced “waiters.” Their experience seems to suspend them in a relationship with time that clashes with my “need” to be “on time.” On time so that I can get somewhere else, do something else, produce something else. The refugee families I work with have difficulty with the practice of appointments. There is a struggle with the recognition of time and the importance of it in their new society. The refugee waiting time is giant, expansive, endless…

But they are all trying.

And I can wait with them for that.