The Waiting Room Novel 소설 & 이야기

Leaving me standing there, alone. “Come.” Nina said to me as we walked inside. She took me pasted the waiting room and into a second waiting room that was just past the double doors. No one else was in here. “This is the wolves’ waiting room.” Nina sat down as she fumbled with her hands. Pacing around the room was the only thing I could think of. It kept me moving and not going crazy. What I wanted to do was punch every single photo of a smiling couple and kick the magazines.

“Yes. Stay awake.” His eyelids flickered. I shook him. “Alexander.” His breathing slowed. And I lost it. “Fight.” My voice cracked. “You fight for everything else. Fight for this. Fight for me.” His hand squeezed mine. Weak. But there. And I held on. The Longest Wait Hospitals smelled like endings. Like places where people held their breath and prayed. I didn’t sit. Couldn’t. I paced the waiting room, hands shaking, my pulse pounding loud enough to drown out everything else.

I crossed the lobby to the reception desk and gave my name. The receptionist typed something, checked her screen, gave me a small nod. "Please take a seat. He'll be with you shortly." I sat in one of the plastic chairs along the wall and put my bag on my knees and folded my hands on top of it. The waiting room was half full. A woman across from me with a small child who was drawing something on the back of a leaflet, his tongue pressed between his lips in concentration. An older man in the corner with his eyes closed, either sleeping or simply resting.

Layla The waiting room smells like antiseptic and recycled air and everyone in it has decided not to look at anyone else. I find a seat in the corner and put my bag on my lap and check the time. 1:47 PM. Thirteen minutes. I look at the wall across from me and try to think about nothing, which doesn’t work, because my brain has had exactly one destination all day and it isn’t this waiting room. It’s a living room. Tuesday night. Two words landing in my chest and staying there like something I can’t find the edge of. It was just sex.

9 LENA The waiting room smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee, the kind that had been sitting in a cheap plastic dispenser for too long. The walls were painted in muted pastels—blue and beige meant to be calming, but under the harsh fluorescent lighting, they just looked sickly. The clock above the receptionist’s desk ticked too loudly, each second scraping against my nerves. I gripped the strap of my bag tighter. My hands were cold, clammy. The receptionist, a woman in her late forties with graying roots and tired eyes, barely glanced at me as she murmured, “You can go in now.”

"Name?" the receptionist asked, barely glancing up from his tablet. "Jack Spencer," I replied, trying to steady my nerves. "Name of the inmate you're visiting?" "Deborah Spencer." The receptionist's fingers danced over the screen, his expression indifferent. I tapped my foot impatiently, glancing around. The waiting area was cold and unwelcoming. The walls were a dull gray, and the fluorescent lights cast a harsh glare, emphasizing the grime and wear of the place. The air was thick with a sense of desperation and hopelessness, as if the building itself had absorbed the sorrow of its occupants.

“Of course, why don’t you take a seat over there and I’ll let you know when she’s ready.” Smiling back at her I tip my head and take a seat in over padded black vinyl chair in the far corner, pulling a kid's comic book from the well-stocked shelf to flick through. The waiting room is surprisingly cozy, with warm tan walls with pictures of the pack's infirmary and those that have worked here through the years in sleek frames on all the walls.

Darla’s POV The waiting room wasn’t fancy. It was just clean, quiet, and cold. With simple gray walls, a humming coffee machine, and not a single distraction. It wasn’t meant to comfort. It was meant to prepare. I sat perfectly still. No glam. No distraction. Just me in a black turtleneck, pressed pants and my hair tied back. I wasn’t here to soften anything. An assistant popped her head in. “We’re ready for you.”

DOWNTOWN MEDICAL CENTER – TWO HOURS LATER The hospital waiting room smelled like hand sanitizer and pure panic. White walls. Bright lights buzzing overhead. Hard plastic chairs that made your back ache after five minutes. Valentina sat squeezed in the corner, hands twisting in her lap like she was trying to wring out her own nerves. Her knees bounced up and down so fast they looked like they had their own heartbeat. Amelia sat on her left, calm but tight-lipped.

Every time the automatic doors at the far end opened, my head jerked up, hope igniting and then snuffing out just as fast when it wasn’t for me. I checked my watch every few minutes, though the hands seemed to mock me, dragging slower with each glance. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Still nothing. Each tick of the second hand drilled deeper into my skull. The waiting room hummed faintly with vending machines, the occasional cough of another visitor, the shuffle of nurses’ shoes. But to me, the world was muted, smothered by one relentless question: Was she alive? At some point, my legs gave out. I collapsed back into the unforgiving steel chair, exhaustion settling on me like chains. My hands f