Waiting Room Shifting Novels & Stories

Like any day, people get excited when their shift ends. Aerys tidied up her area while waiting for the next person assigned for the night shift. "Do you want to come with us to drink, Loren?" Hearing some voices, Aerys looked up and saw Loren and the others coming down. She glanced at the wall clock and saw it was time for her shift to end. 'She's late.' Aerys kept on glancing at the employee's area, hoping that the person to relieve her would be there. It was a company policy for the reception booth to be left unattended.

If I had just been more insistent and more assertive last night, maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation now. The waiting room was a sterile, cold place, filled with the low hum of fluorescent lights and the murmured conversations of other anxious people. The minutes ticked by excruciatingly slowly. I tried to focus on my breathing, on staying calm, but my thoughts kept spiralling back to Nicholas. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Dr. Carter appeared. I jumped up, my heart leaping into my throat. “How is he?”

The effort of that tolerance was visible in the slightly careful way he moved through the rest of the evening, as if excess energy might jostle something loose. The third day was the longest. I took an early shift and stayed longer than required, filling the hours with documentation and follow-ups that could have waited. The hospital’s ordinary crises—a delayed imaging slot, a family that needed a clearer explanation of a surgical timeline—occupied the foreground. In the background the laboratory clock continued its impersonal countdown. By late afternoon the message arrived that the result had been finalized and was being transmitted through the secure channel. I read the notification in th

At school, I had a nickname. They called me "Mister Wait-Your-Turn." I waited for the sneakers my brother had grown tired of, the backpack my sister thought was ugly, and the phones my parents had already cracked the screens of. Even when it came to taking a shower, I had to wait until everyone else was done. A week ago, Mom had promised me, "On the day of your college entrance exam, you won't have to wait your turn for the shower." So when I finally stumbled into the bathroom, drenched in sweat and smelling awful, I thought my turn had finally come. I was halfway through working up a lather when someone started pounding on the door. "Come out. Let your brother go in." My eyes stung,

He went through the doors. I sat down in the nearest plastic chair. I stared at the ceiling. The waiting room had the specific quality of all waiting rooms, which was the quality of a place designed to contain people in a state of suspension, neither here nor there, caught between the thing that had happened and the thing that had not happened yet. Fluorescent lighting. The ambient noise of a building that was busy in other rooms. A television in the corner showing something with the volume low enough to be heard but not followed.

"It's out and will be here soon." Frank nodded and checked his watch. "Five minutes." "Good." Madam Shaw sighed in relief. During the wait, the entire conference room was quiet. I looked at Frank's expression and roughly guessed the answer. My heart pounded like a drum. My palms were drenched with cold sweat, again and again. Madam Shaw and Bethany were visibly growing anxious. Madam Shaw kept glancing at the time.

"Let's go sit in the waiting room." As if my body is on autopilot, I follow Kayla silently into the surgical waiting room. She keeps trying to make small talk while we wait for some answers but nothing that she says is registering in my mind. I can't think about anything else but Ward and the condition that he is in. "I heard you finally shifted," Kayla changes the subject for the thousandth time. Keeping my eyes focused on the double doors ahead of me, I simply nod my head in response.

Seeing my reaction he growled again, his body tense as if he was about to lose control. "We're going to need Tyler and Chad." The doctor said as Eden looked at the him. Eden must have summoned them telepathically because they appeared a minuet later. Once they got here the Doc looked at me with a little concern and worry. "This will be extremely painful since you are way passed shifting age and you are going to be bit before..." "It's okay I'm used to pain." I said causing Eden, Tyler, and Chad to growl. We all got up and went to a room with padded floors that they use for other people shifting for the first time.

She waited—my answer would decide whether she moved at all. “I’m here,” I said. “I’m here right now.” She held my gaze for another second. Then she let the nurse help her into the wheelchair—my words changed what happened next and removed the last reason for her to stay put. I followed them inside. The staff fired questions at Lena fast. She answered between short breaths. At the desk they directed me to wait while they assessed her, so I watched them wheel her down the long hallway. She never turned back. I stood in the middle of the waiting room. The constant movement around me limited my options to standing there and doing nothing useful, so the wait forced my hand back into my pocket.

He held hers back in the way he held things that mattered, with the full settled weight of him, not performing the holding, just holding. The waiting room had four other people in it and a television mounted in the corner playing something with the sound off. The chairs were the standard chairs, plastic and institutional, the same chairs that appeared in waiting rooms all over the country as though there had been a single procurement decision made about waiting rooms somewhere in the 1980s and no one had revisited it since. She had a specific