The human being — a patient — entered the doctor’s waiting room the way an astronaut crosses the event horizon. Only the door creaked with earthly sound; everything else felt cosmically distorted.
Outside, the world continued at its usual pace: Cars flowed, clocks ticked, people made phone calls. But inside the waiting room, time stretched like rubber, an elastic universe breaking away from any known physics.
And far beyond the window, time seemed to run faster, as if the air pressure out there were higher — filled with obligations and responsibilities.
The first ten minutes in here were still normal. They belonged to the invisible buffer zone before the event horizon — that place where you can still pretend everything will move along soon.
At fifteen minutes, the first critical glance at the wall clock or wristwatch.
At thirty minutes, the pressure of the chair against the sitting bones became painfully noticeable.
“Well, this is dragging on…”
Why did the other waiting person go in earlier …
