After the American Century
I am sitting in a new emergency room, where I have taken my mother-in-law, because she has broken her thumb working in the garden. She insisted that she could cut the hedge while smoking a cigar at the same time, but fell over a bush. I did not see it, as I was up on a ladder with my back to her. That is another story, not to be told here. But for almost four hours I have been sitting in this curious public space, where many ailing people come through, all of them ambulatory. More serious cases come in by ambulance and by-pass this room.
In fact, if I did not know what this place was, I might have difficulty deciding what it is.
