He would have gotten up, the man, walked around, time-killed before his name was called, but sitting options weren't much better elsewhere, and sitting-waiting was better then not-sitting-waiting. The real sorry looking ones sat close to the reception window, in direct view to the receptionist, just so they wouldn't be forgotten. A tall black man with no teeth and sweatpants and black hightops and a Northface jacket and no shirt on underneath sat among them, talking to himself in what seemed like rhymes. ––If you're sick, it's Rick. If you're Rick, you're sick. If you're sad, you're mad, if you're mad, he said and so on. The man with the spasms gave up on the television and watched the rhyming black man in the Northface. He took a while to get from one clause to another, shuffling through his mental rolodex of possible rhymes then speaking upon discovery, shouting his next rhyme, never screening it for sense, never revising. His happiness was pulse-like, in direct proportion to his ability to come up with another homophone. When he landed one, a slight smile crept into his face, and it grew louder and teethier with each successive one. When he hit a wall, the color of his face sputtered out like helium from a latex balloon.

The woman with the baby sat in the corner whispering to the baby, trying to get it to stop screaming already. The man who was with her, some kind of husband-looking type, sat there fumbling, trying to decide where he should put his hands. Underneath a poster that proposed there to be no I in TEAM sat a man whose face was covered equal parts in dirt and follicle, asleep, with the crotch of his pants given out––from overwear probably, not some brilliant idea for self-cooling. A Muslim woman sitting with her father whose eyes kept rolling back into his head, she kept raising her scarf above her eyes, as if embarrassed, as if her father's eyes were hers. On the television, Homer was at the breakfast table reading the newspaper. He turned to the morning horoscope section, to his own horoscope, and the camera cut close: ––Today will be a day like every other day.

A nurse came out an unmarked wooden door with no handle on the outside. She was very old and incapable of surprise and, her face stricken with a grave case of heard-it-all, seemed to believe that everyone in the waiting room was just faking it. She was their everything; she didn't seem to care. They watched her play with her clipboard and say nothing still, click her pen up and make scribbles and dodge their eyes. And when she didn't look at any of them, all of them glared round the room at each other, making accusations for crimes that weren't crimes, suspecting one person, then another, then hating that one person, then another, whoever he was, whoever seemed like he knew something the others didn't. No one knew what name the nurse would call, who she would choose––though no doubt it was her choice, and so half the room ratcheted up the yelps and aches and pains and hellish eye rolls, and the other half just sat there extra polite, believing the old nurse to know what's what, hoping she'd reward them for their respect for the proper channels.

––Mr. Matthews, she said. She did not look up. An older man, 70 or so, had to be with a face like that, who had just walked in ten minutes prior, a grade-a hunchback who spoke some kind of Slavic with a woman who looked twice his age––it was Mr. Matthews, and he stood up. ––Up, he said, and he got up, and he turned to his woman then round the rest of them, ––that's me. Nobody believed him. Nobody had even seen him a minute ago. He took his time getting to the door, and the rest scrutinized his waddle, checked it for swagger, scanned it for some reason, any at all, to trip the man up or drop an elbow on him or thrash him wild for failing to pay his due. This was the logic, dues and paying them, then the door closed.

It was another ten or so minutes before the black guy with the rhymes and sorry teeth and the Northface started rhyming again. The man with the spasms had lost track. Inside him was this hellacious scream, and it demanded of him all energy to keep his jaw locked into its current aperture, to keep it in. The Northface grin grew steady. Holding his pattern, he fell into a trance: If you're THIS then you're THAT, if you're THAT then you're THIS, on and on and on, a series of conditionals followed by remarks in conclusion––only they never were in conclusion, merely built up then broken down with no apparent concern for what came before or after. Then, then out of nada he dropped his unrhyme, broke the cycle, and therein: a revelation. If you're drunk, you're a skunk. If you're skunk you're a monk. If you're monk, you're a crunk. If you're crunk, you're...WHERE'S MY FUCKING NEWSPAPER WHO STOLE MY FUCKING NEWSPAPER. The man with the spasms listened closely, trying to divine. Most times the rhyming man's revelation had something to do with some kind of missing newspaper. He thought about giving up on him. Bart talked about rainforests. His mouth didn't match the words.

They met eyes. The man regretted this deeply. The black man smiled and held him there, tractored. If you're white you're right, if you're right you fight, if you fight, you might, if you might... you might as well. The spell broke. The black man shrugged his shoulders, and loosened his gaze, and looked away from the man. The man with the spasms seemed to have disappointed him. He turned his head and fixed his rhymes elsewhere, now toward the younger Latin American kid with the mohawk and the bleeding left hand, covered in what looked like frilly cocktail napkins swiped from the bar. If you're hurt you're a flirt. If you're a flirt you're dirt. If you're you're dirt you're––

The kid's massive indifference to the black man might have been a language barrier thing, or belief in some alternate version of physics, as if a person's non-movements might render him invisible. IF YOU'RE HURT YOU'RE A FLIRT. IF YOU'RE A FLIRT YOU'RE DIRT. The rhyming mouth, that mouth and the breath and gums spiked like a mace, it was no further than two or three inches from the kid's face now, and his wet funk and spittle they all saw condense onto the kid's pimply forehead, and they waited for him to flinch, and when he didn't flinch, and when they were absolutely positive he wouldn't flinch any time soon, they relaxed and sat back, all of them, relieved there was a martyr among them. IF YOU'RE DIRT YOU'RE HURT, IF YOU'RE DIRT YOU'RE HURT, IF YOU'RE DIRT YOU'RE HURT. Relieved and entertained now, for it became like watching one of those endurance shows on TV, the ones on bad cable with some beautiful woman or an old guy with a beard who has to hold his breath under water or so IF YOU'RE HURT YOU'RE A SKIRT in order for his team to win a chance to compete in another equally ridiculous endurance test that IF YOU'RE HURT the black man in the Northface started screaming so loudly that the midget next to the man woke up, and the midget seemed not scared but irritated, and by now some of the less delighted patients in ERWR2 began pounding on the bulletproof glass, and the receptionist watched the television, and the rent-a-cop stood there bored. IF YOU'RE SKIRT THEN YOU'RE The receptionist turned up the television. Bart in class daydreaming. WORSE Skinner at the top of the class: ––Class, instead of going to the box factory today, we'll be going to the...box factory. The baby started crying again and the midget started fidgeting and the rent-a-cop and the corn syrup smell. The kid's face and the rabid frothing IF YOU'RE WORSE YOU'RE CURSED and now the spasms and the stomach that crunched and the man falling and the floor being colder than the man thought it'd be IF YOU'RE CURSED YOU'RE