Protective Bubble
There are chairs, yes. A television mounted too high in one corner, tuned to something benign, rather loud…oh, it's the Today Show. A stack of magazines that no one touches anymore. The illusion of order. But the air is busy. It hums. It carries stories that haven’t been told yet and fears that are already halfway formed. Urgent care waiting rooms are never quiet, even when they look like they should be.
This one is crowded. Not dramatically, just enough. People close enough that you can hear each other breathe if you listen for it. A woman pacing near the check-in desk. A man hunched forward, elbows on knees, scrolling and unscrolling on his phone as if he’s trying to rub the anxiety away with his thumb. A little girl, with a high pony, brown soft curl wrapped around her shoulder, swinging her feet against the chair leg, rhythmically, blissfully unaware of how loud that small sound feels when you’re already on edge.
I sit down and immediately start doing what I always do.
I take stock.
Not of symptoms. Of energy.
Who looks scared. Who looks annoyed. Who looks like they’re pretending not to be either. I notice the receptionist’s voice, steady but clipped and how often she repeats the same sentence with different inflections. I notice the way the nurse calls names, the slight pause before each one, as if bracing herself for whatever emotion will meet her when she looks up.
This is the part that happens automatically. I don’t decide to do it. It just… clicks on.
Somewhere along the way, I learned how to read rooms faster than I read instructions. How to sense urgency without asking for details. How to become very still inside myself when everything around me is not.
The urgent care doesn’t really allow waiting. It creates a strange hybrid state, half emergency, half patience exercise. Everyone is here because something tipped from manageable into concerning. Everyone has already rehearsed the story they’ll tell when their name is called. Everyone believes, at least a little, that their situation is both uniquely important and probably not important enough.
I am no exception.
But instead of rehearsing what I’ll say, I start building something else: a bubble.
It’s not visual, exactly. It’s more like a soft perimeter. A way of shrinking the space just enough so it doesn’t press in on me. I adjust my posture. I slow my breathing without making it obvious. I fix my gaze somewhere neutral, not on the TV, not on anyone else, and I let the noise move around me instead of through me.
I’ve done this before. Hundreds of times, probably. In places much louder than this. Places where the stakes felt higher. Places where emotions were sharper, less contained.
The bubble isn’t about escaping. It’s about regulating.
Sometimes the bubble needs a seal.
I slip my earbuds in, quietly, deliberately, and the room finally loses its grip on me. The hum, the sighs, the television laughter, the small collisions of sound all fade until there’s just what I’ve chosen to let in. I don’t overthink the music. I never do. I open Steph’s Fav’s List and let it decide for me — the steadiness of Doris Day, the unexpected lift of Vampire Weekend, the familiar comfort of Paul Simon. Melodies I trust. Voices that don’t demand anything from me. The effect is almost immediate. My shoulders drop a fraction. My breath lengthens. My mind, which has been hovering just above alert, finally settles into my body.
If I can come down enough, if the noise inside me quiets alongside the noise outside, I give myself permission to drift. I scroll Instagram aimlessly. Or I pull out a book and read the same paragraph twice, not because I’m distracted, but because reading itself feels like proof that I’m safe enough to be somewhere else for a moment. This, too, is part of the bubble. Not escape exactly, more like a gentle refusal to be consumed by the urgency of a room that never actually waits.
I don’t think about the possibility of bad news yet. I don’t catastrophize. I don’t spiral. That comes later, sometimes. Right now, I’m busy doing something else: managing the room.
I lower my expectations of time. I stop tracking minutes. I release the idea that this will move efficiently or logically. I let myself believe that sitting here, breathing, watching, is the only thing required of me for now.
This is the part that looks calm from the outside.
Inside, it’s a little more complicated.
Because while I’m slowing myself down, I’m also staying alert. Attuned. Ready. There’s a tension there, a quiet one, between surrender and vigilance. I notice it in my shoulders first. Then in my jaw. The way my body wants to be both relaxed and prepared, just in case.
There’s one sound I never fully tune out, even inside the bubble.
The door.
Every time it opens, my attention lifts instinctively, before I tell it to. The hinge, the brief pause, the inhale before a name is called. I look up without meaning to, listening closely — is it mine? No. Not yet. The door closes again, and I settle back, only to repeat the same quiet cycle minutes later. It’s a strange kind of vigilance, not panic exactly, but readiness. As if missing my name would be some small personal failure. As if hesitation could cost me my place entirely.
A man across from me sighs loudly. It’s the kind of sigh that wants acknowledgment. No one gives it. A few minutes later, he sighs again, louder. I feel the reflex before I stop it, the urge to look up, to offer some small human signal that says yes, I see you, this is hard.
I don’t do it.
Not because I’m unkind. But because I’ve learned that if I open that door, even a crack, I’ll spend the rest of the time holding space for everyone but myself.
This is another pattern I recognize only after it’s already in motion.
In chaotic spaces, I become quietly responsible.
Not in a formal way. No one assigns it to me. I just step into it. I absorb the atmosphere. I soften sharp edges. I make myself smaller so the room feels more manageable.
It’s a skill. And like most skills, it comes with a cost.
The nurse calls a name that isn’t mine. Someone stands too quickly, knocking their knee against the chair. I flinch, then smile to myself for flinching. I take another slow breath.
I wonder, briefly, when I learned to do this.
Was it family dinners that felt one question away from unraveling? Waiting rooms long before this one? Being the person who could stay steady while others spun? I don’t chase the answer. I just notice the familiarity of the motion the way calm has become something I manufacture rather than something I expect to be given.
The TV laughs at something canned. No one else does.
Time moves strangely here. It stretches, then snaps back. Five minutes feels like fifteen. Fifteen feels like nothing at all. I glance at my phone, then put it face down again. I don’t want updates. I want containment.
My name is called eventually. It always is. When I stand, my bubble dissolves instantly. The noise rushes back in. The room resumes its scale. I’m aware of my body again, the weight of it, the reason I’m here. There’s a sudden urgency in my body that surprises me. I stand too quickly, move too fast, smiling as if to reassure everyone, including myself, that I’m ready, that I heard, that I won’t slow things down. Somewhere in me is the irrational fear that if I don’t respond immediately, I’ll be skipped, quietly returned to an invisible line I can’t see but deeply believe in. That the moment will pass without me. That waiting, once again, will start over.
As I follow the nurse down the hallway, I feel something I didn’t expect: a small flicker of recognition.
Not about the visit. About the ease with which I navigated the chaos. About how practiced I am at finding quiet in places that don’t offer it. About how natural it feels to regulate myself instead of asking for space to be made.
It’s not a dramatic realization. Just a gentle one.
The room doesn’t change.
The waiting doesn’t either.
I notice how I move through it —
and then I let it keep moving.
