John sat quietly in the dimly waiting room. A fluorescent light in the ceiling was flickering repeatedly, but John had long since stopped paying attention to it. There was only one other person with him in the waiting room: an elderly woman who had fallen asleep more than an hour ago. Her soft snores broke the silence as John stared at the wall across from him.
He had counted the cracks in the fall. In the span of 20 minutes–maybe it had been 30–he had tallied up about 18 different cracks. Some were barely visible and others ran several feet in length, merging with other cracks to form almost a river tributary system of sorts.
Time passed slowly in the waiting room.