#6. In Which Sharon, Christy, and I Arrive at PMH

Let me tell you about some of the people we have met in our travels.  

For example, let me tell you about the rudest receptionist in the world.  

It is our first time at Princess Margaret Hospital.  We are confused, disoriented.  We have spent half an hour driving around the area, trying to find the damn place.  Never mind that it is an enormous building right on University Avenue, between the Ontario Hydro Building (the curvy, shiny one), and Mount Sinai Hospital, where I have been many times.  Never mind that I have the address on a slip of paper; 610 University Avenue.  Just, never mind.

We have spiraled endlessly upward in a parking garage that wants $5.00 for every half-hour we stay.  We have negotiated elevators and traffic and crowds and more elevators, and finally arrived at our destination: the G.I. Clinic.

The waiting room is packed.  Hundreds of people fill almost every chair in the place.  It is huge, and it is packed with people!  How can this be?  If even half these people have cancer (most people are with a companion) the number of people with cancer must be staggering.  And this is just the Gastro-Intestinal Unit!

[Interesting aside:  my spell checker does not recognize "Gastro-Intestinal".  Fair enough, I suppose.  It suggests instead I might want to write "Castro-Intestinal".  I am bemused.] 

But we are here.  We make our way through the crowds to the reception area, patiently wait our turn, and approach the glass partition which separates the office staff from the madding crowd.  The receptionist is a Chinese woman of perhaps 50.  She is busy.  Typing or something.  We wait.  She types.  We stand there.  She ignores us.  We shuffle our feet.  She examines her computer.  We notice she has a large mole on her upper lip.  (This is not really relevant to anything, but we have lots of time to notice such things.)   She continues to do . . . what?  Anything but acknowledge our existence.

Finally one of us notices a large, Plexiglas box on the counter in front of her.  In the top of the box is a slot.  Below the box is a sign.  "Put your OHIP card in the box," says the sign.  It is an "Aha!" moment.

I dig out my Health Card, and dutifully drop it in the box . . .

We've all seen those "fortune-telling" machines in arcades or at fairs.  Drop a coin in the slot, and an animated, robotic "fortune-teller" waves her arms about, makes some vague pronouncement, and presents you with your "fortune" on a little card.

And so it is with our receptionist.  Her eyes drift away from her computer, rise slowly to meet mine, and she speaks.  I am mesmerized by her mole.

"Do you have a blue hospital card?" she says.  I do not.  I am new here.

"You have to get a blue hospital card.  First floor."  End of conversation. 

We have arrived.  Welcome to the machine.