5
Full of surprises
Lila leftSawyer in the waiting room of the free clinic. It was barely past eight, and the waiting room was already full of people waiting to be seen. Some had appointments and others were walk-in. Some people came to the clinic instead of the emergency room, and they needed to be triaged in order of need. There were already two alarmingly high fevers, a badly bleeding cut, and a potentially broken arm waiting in exam rooms for diagnosis and treatment. Lila was signing in at the check-in counter and scanning the case load, when the sliding doors whooshed open and a man limped in, leaning on the shoulder of a woman wearing a hijab.
The woman was crying as she waved at the registration desk, presumably for help. Lila couldn’t tell; the woman was speaking what Lila assumed was Arabic. A nurse wheeled a chair over to the couple quickly and sat the man down. Lila ran over from the counter and looked at the leg the woman pointed at. Lila rolled up the man’s pant cuff to find his calf badly swollen and purple. A deep gash ran up the muscle, and it was then Lila realized he was holding a bloody towel. The woman began to talk, but Lila held up her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t understand you. Take him to a room.” she told the nurse.
This was her first time seeing patients who didn’t speak English at all. She started to follow the nurse, when Sawyer jumped up from the chair where he’d been sitting with a magazine. Without waiting or even looking at Lila, he put his arm around the woman and walked her to the desk, talking to her in what sounded like the same language. The woman nodded along.
“Her husband is remodeling their kitchen,” he told the receptionist, after a few minutes of a vigorous conversation. “He fell off a ladder and cut his leg on a cabinet edge on the way down. He told her it was just a cut and she shouldn’t worry, but then it started to swell.”
The receptionist typed what he said into the clinic computer. “Can you help me get her info?”
Sawyer nodded.
“You speak Arabic?” Lila asked. She tried to hide her surprise.
“Yes,” Sawyer replied. “But she’s speaking Farsi.” He repeated the receptionist’s questions to the woman. “She wants to know if she can go back with her husband.”
The receptionist nodded as a younger man burst through the doors and came up to the woman and hugged her, before speaking to her in Farsi and then turning his attention to Sawyer.
“She’s already checked in?” The young man asked, his eyes darting between Sawyer and the receptionist.
Sawyer nodded. “Got her taken care of.”
“Thank you,” the man replied. “I got here as quick as I could. This is my mom.”
“You can come back with her,” Lila said. “Follow me.”
She stole another glance at Sawyer, who winked at her, before leading the woman and her son back to the exam rooms. She couldn’t help the smile that flooded her cheeks, as she looked back. Sawyer was leaning on his elbows across the counter, joking with the blonde-haired receptionist and making her laugh. Maybe, she’d judged Sawyer a little too quickly. It wasn’t often she was surprised by people. What else could be surprising about him, she wondered?
