It does happen

“Sometimes the bad guy wins”, said Walter's Grandfather.

It was something that stuck with Walter. It was true, this wasn’t the make believe world of Hollywood where the bad guys always get their comeuppance. In the real world, bad guys did win, and more often than just sometimes. Walter had seen it in the news and so often just on the city streets. The person being bad usually gets away with it while those they try to make the world better go unnoticed.

Walter adjusted his tie. He’d been in the waiting room for his doctor for over 35 minutes and was getting very uncomfortable. He was starting to think that his doctor was a bad guy, abusing his power to heal us by making us wait for him like a prima donna opera star. He cleared his throat and the disinterested receptionist barely looked up from her InStyle magazine. She was a cute girl but sort of lumpy in all the wrong places. Plus she chewed gum incessantly.

The room had about six uncomfortable brown chairs placed in a long row along a beige and white wallpapered wall. There was a withering fern in the corner near an end table covered in two year old magazines. Walter had flipped through them all, including the old Highlights kid’s magazine. The light overhead flickered ever so slightly with usual electrical pulse of an aging fluorescent bulb.

Walter realized his doctor was truly evil and had a sadist streak in him 20 miles long. Why else would he have told Walter about the cancer but then make him wait for forty minutes? Clearly it was because he was a dick and got off on the misery of his, “patients”.    

Walter cleared his throat more aggressively and got the lumpy receptionist’s attention.

“Any idea when Dr. Death will be ready to see me”, asked Walter.

“No. He’s got a lot of early appointments that are running long”, she snapped with her gum.

Walter had arrived ten minutes early for his appointment and the waiting room was empty. No one’s mother was sitting anxiously in the corner, no child was sneezing, no old man with an oxygen tank was wheezing after the long walk from the elevator. Walter had a hard time believing the doctor was busy.

Walter slumped back in his chair. Sometimes, the bad guys do win, he thought. He picked up a four month old Time magazine and tried to fight back the tears that were welling in his eyes.