Underwater

This afternoon at yet one more medical appointment I would rather not have been at, I sat in the stripped waiting room, my temperature at 97.1 and my hands still slick from the hand sanitizer.

          I was early and soon tired of playing with my phone. Magazines are no longer an option at doctors’ offices (imagine all those issues piling up at the doc’s house). All that remained was the fish tank to my right.

          I gazed in, expecting to be soothed by the fish weaving back and forth through their phony plants. The longer I watched, the more disturbing it became. Even given the tiny brain of a fish, what kind of life would this be, stuck forever in this two-foot by one-foot tank. It was then I realized it was all too similar to the lives many of us led this past spring.