West Suburban Hospital, a full-service institution, provides live entertainment in at least one of its waiting rooms. You need, or someone very close to you thinks you need, a hearing test? Fine. Go to the sixth floor of the doctors’ office wing and turn right (long way) or left (short way). Either way gets you to your appointed room.
Enter and fill out forms, surrender your insurance card briefly, sit down. Nice lady behind counter has given you instructions, looking first to the left of you, second to the right of you, finally at your face when you say something. (I hate it when people look at me when they’re talking to me.)
In a way it’s the start of the test. Someone is listening from behind a one-way mirror, waiting to hear how many times I say “What?” I believe that and don’t want to hear from anyone who doesn’t.
Now the entertainment. You’re there a good fifteen minutes early, either because the nice lady had said on the phone that you should do so, not looking at you this time either, or because you remember how dumb you have felt coming late to things and want no more of that. You can’t remember.
The nice lady hits the phone, and the show begins. Another early hearing test maybe. How much will I catch as I eavesdrop? I catch this: The kid on the other end has no one to talk to, but “You can always talk to Grandma,” says the nice lady. Thank God, I mutter, looking at but not seeing the pages of my Times Literary Supplement.
The rest is filling. The outlines are clear: Grandma is taking care of business on this day of my hearing test, and her business, in addition to giving me things to fill out and copying my insurance card, is The Family. Everyone should have such a grandma.
Five minutes or so, end of Conversation One. Then the nice lady’s friend, a co-worker, drops by, using a door behind the counter, and the two discuss the child’s problems. Another hearing test: Can I catch it?
The drift, yes. The friend commiserates with the nice lady-grandma, analyzing the problem, does some mild cluck-clucking. But all in all, shows keen interest in the drama that unfolds before her. Before me too, listening carefully, though still with TLS staring me in the face.
I turn to look at the friend. She swivels and looks at me immediately. He who looks will never be ignored, except maybe when being addressed. I keep my gaze level. You don’t look away at such moments. She turns back to the nice lady-grandmother.
Ten minutes more, and it’s over. Another nice lady, the audiologist, pokes her head out of yet another door. I make her wait while correcting a late-arriving sheet from the nice lady-grandma with an out-of-date address. She’s patient. Away we go, into the hearing-test chamber. No more entertainment. Now I am front and center. All ears.
