Little Things While Waiting For School

So, I walk into the Family Room, with my usual script.

"Hey, everybody, you can help yourself with coffee and tea here. Careful - the water's super-hot. Milk's down here in this fridge. If you need that phone, dial one for an outside line.."

(smile)

I woosh back out, with a cup of tea. Then back.

"Oh from Brazil? Like on vacation? So how did they do in the soccer World Cup? Oh, I'm sorry."

Blah-de-blah-blah about sport...

I retrieve a couple of meal trays. And do a little supply stocking. Then back to the family room, to eat my lunch sandwiches...

A Japanese woman with a small child.

"Hi there, you can have some coffee or tea if you want."

I chomp my sandwich.

The woman starts crying. And the little girl moves to another chair. She figures out that I work here. And looks up.

"Is my daddy dead?" Or is he alive?"

"Uuuuhhhmmm... Okaay...do you know what room he was in?"

"Number three"

"OK, I will ask the nurse, and I will be right back."

(A moment later)

"OK, don't worry. Your daddy just went to have a test. It is a machine that looks at his head. Then, the doctor's will look at the test, and see what is going on. Don't worry."

She walks right to the door of the Family Room, and insists on looking out.

"OK, those people work here. The people in the blue outfits are nurses. And that guy there in the green outfit is a doctor. The people with the green and yellow jackets drive the ambulance. Like that nice guy who drove your daddy earlier. They drop the people off, and give them to the nurses.

"It's just like kids at school sometime have to wear uniforms. And grownups have to do that, too.n

"Don't worry."

"What is your job?"

"Well, I just serve the meals. And clean the rubbish and change the sheets. I am just working to try to get into school to be one of the blue blue people.

"But that's not important.

"The important thing is that this is a really good hospital."

"Why?"

"Uuhhmmm, well, they have lots of fancy machines to test people. And they have lots of very nice doctors and nurses, and, uuuhhhmmm....

And, yeah, I will apply into school, and study hard, and pass tests and get a licence, and get a job.

And someday I will hear this question again, and I will a be a professional and it will be on me to give the bad answer. It will be something other than, "I'm just the meal-server..."

The big things will jolt you at first. Mangled or gross or smelly. But the things that stay in your mind are actually the small ones.

I can smile and serve a meal to literally anyone and everyone. I can see, here, and smell a lot of really gross stuff. I can suppress my gag reflex in both the literal and the metaphorical sense.

But, damn... A six-year-old asking me if her father is still alive...

Damn, I need something funny to happen soon.