captain_slinky | 120 - Look Back & Laugh

I had been the first to show up at the hospital some two hours before the appointment, meaning that I had been in that waiting room for 9 hours before the surgeon came out to address us. The surgery had taken nearly two hours longer than scheduled, which filled us all with an unspoken dread. They had warned that though very rare, there *could be* complications - and complications are NEVER good. Since I had been there the longest, she came to me and tapped me on the shoulder before removing her blue mask. She looked tired underneath, all the way to her posture.

"Mister Pierce? Are you the only one that made it this far?" Oh, no, I just came over here to get some quiet - the rest of the family is right over there. She forced a half-hearted, weary smile and said "Okay, you want to gather the rest and bring them over here so we can...?"

The family stopped talking and prairie-dogged their heads towards me as I walked across the waiting room to wake my brother who had nodded off while sitting upright in his chair in the classic "I am awake or at the very least dreaming about being awake in this position" position. "C'mon... surgery is over, the surgeon wants to talk to us".

We all started walking towards the doctor, who was slump-leaning against a wall. We walked a bit slower as we all saw the sad, tired expression on the doctor's face, and my Sister admitted later on that her knees almost buckled when we saw the surgeon wearilly wipe a tear from her eye as we approached.

The surgeon looked at the group of us and then looked to me, asking "Is this...?" I nodded. She took a deep breath, sighed, and said "Okay then..."

"The surgery went just fine. They'll be moving her to the Recovery Area as soon as the anesthetic wears off. Things look good, no complications or anything".

There was much crying and hugging and thank-yous going on, and i couldn't stop my inappropriate laughing at how we had just lived through a scene directly taken from an Arrested Development script :)