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.

Time will tell

Three hours later, I was still waiting. The cast was being set, and I had moved on to blatant staring.

A very young looking doctor came out to speak with the family. Like the family members, I held my breath.
“Your husband will be fine.”
and exhaled.
“He was suffering from the initial stages of neurosyphilis which caused his mental confusion and incontinence. He’s a very lucky man that you brought him in. This could have been very, very serious.”
Neurosiphi-what? That sounded an awful lot like..
The daughter piped up, “doctor, what is neurosyphilis? It sounds an awful lot like…”
“Neurosyphilis is a very serious condition and happens when a person infected with syphilis lets it go untreated. Given the development of the infection, I’d say he was initially infected a good long while ago.”

“So, could he have gotten it from a blood transfusion. I mean I know the normal way syphilis spreads, but there have to be other ways..” the daughter trailed off.

Time will tell

“That goddamn dirty whore.”
Surprised eyes landed on the mother. Mine followed. As absorbed as a college student during daytime soaps, I could not tear myself away to even blink.

My brother emerged on crutches and a cast, blowing my cover. I tried to interest him in People magazine so he could catch his breath and I could catch the rest of the story. He wasn’t interested.

Time will tell

As I slowly, slowly made my way to the door, I heard the story unravel. Her husband, Ralph, had had an ‘indiscretion’ with a prostitute twenty years earlier but she had let it pass, for the sake of the children.

Evidently time will heal an aching heart, but not syphilis.