Time will tell

I was sitting in the ER’s waiting room. I had driven my brother to the hospital after an opposing team member mistook his leg for the ball and broke my brother’s tibia.

Bored with the tattered and dated People magazines, I started to discretely people watch. Right away my attention was drawn to a family in an adjacent grouping of chairs. The matriarch was surrounded by what seemed to be her grown children. Though they were mostly silent, I could tell from the older woman’s clump of tissues that this was a serious vigil. Every now and then the daughter would rub her mother’s back or ask if she wanted tea, coffee, juice. The beverages held little appeal.