Vignettes of Poughkeepsie: CareMount Medical Urgent Care, Wednesday, January 31, 10:15a.m.

The winter months are known to bring the most sickness, so urgent care centers are typically crowded with coughing, wheezing patients, but, luckily, not today. CareMount Medical Urgent Care has seen little movement in its waiting room since it opened its doors at 8 a.m. this morning. One younger woman was ahead of me in line explaining her infant’s symptoms to the receptionist, I explained my symptoms and took a seat a few rows behind the couple with the infant.

No, I am not dying. Urgent care facilities are a convenient option for people with non-life threatening illness that can’t see their primary doctor that day…or for college students like me whose school health centers refuse to diagnose them with any illness (or a simple ear infection).

CareMount Medical Urgent Care waiting room is lined with about five rows of five chairs each, all facing in the same direction. The setup kind of reminded of what an AA meeting might look like… a bunch of empty chairs and people waiting their turn. The room looked like it hadn’t been touched since they opened earlier in the morning. There were magazines in perfect order on the wall to the right of me and a children’s play set that definitely hadn’t been played with today. The only movement I saw was the man rocking the infant, who was very quiet for a sick child, and the woman tapping her foot in nervousness. When the nurse came out and called my name, the receptionist jumped as if she had just been scared. I guess she had gotten used to the eerie quietness of the waiting room.