It looks ordinary from the outside. Beige chairs. A flickering TV tuned to the weather. Magazines months out of date. But this waiting room is not bound by time. It lives just outside the rules of physics, tucked between the breath you didn’t know you were holding and the moment the nurse calls your name.

Children here sometimes age in reverse. I once saw a toddler fold into an old man between triage and discharge. He left with a cane and a question he couldn’t remember asking. A woman in the corner waited so long she turned translucent. We could see the constellation of a missed diagnosis shining faintly behind her clavicle.

There are clocks, but they lie. Minutes stretch like taffy. A single hour can loop three times before it lets go. Some people arrive before they are injured. Others arrive long after they’ve already died. The security guard swears he saw the same man check in three nights in a row with different names and the same eyes.

I try not to linger here. The pull is strong. The room forgets nothing and forgives slowly.

But sometimes, when I have a moment between rooms, I pause at the threshold. I watch the currents of grief and hope swirl like mist around the chairs. A boy draws a perfect circle on his jeans with one finger. A woman whispers a prayer into the palm of her hand and then swallows it. Two strangers recognize each other and say nothing.

There is a myth among us. That the emergency department is a place of science and structure, blood and protocol. But this room knows better. This room is where the souls arrive first. They gather here, unsure if they will be welcomed or refused, healed or witnessed.

Some never leave. Not really. Their names linger on the sign-in sheet long after the ink fades.

I have seen people walk in alone and find someone they had forgotten they were missing. Sometimes, that someone is a version of themselves.