I'd taken with me a book to read yesterday in the waiting room at the Eye Institute. A much-acclaimed novel about the earliest days of New South Wales where Sydney, Australia began its life as a penal colony. Great Britain's undesirables, men and women and children who were cast off to fend for themselves, those who were largely poverty-stricken, born into endemic indigence and destined to die within its cruel clutches, and who were sometimes caught stealing bread or objects for resale to feed themselves and their families and whose penalty under the laws then practised, was capital punishment. The fortune ones, those who escaped the public spectacle of the noose, were exposed to the rigours of a nine-month voyage within a crowded dank, dark ship's hold, their families held elsewhere on the ship, experiencing no more pleasure in the passage than the 'criminals'.

The book's narrative kept me engaged for awhile, but the tension and boredom of awaiting medical attention never fails to grip one. The large waiting room area was full of others awaiting attention and many eyes were focused on the large overhead television screen. On it, endless images of American officials being interviewed over the carnage in Syria and the atrocities that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was treating his Sunni civilians to. Thankfully, the sound was turned off and people had to make do with the printed headlines, but in fact, anyone interested in those occurrences knew precisely what was being discussed.

Directly across from the waiting room is an infrastructure stretch of a reception area behind which a number of receptionists were kept busy by the people streaming onto the Eye Institute floor of the Civic Hospital building through the elevators situated directly across from the elongated reception desk. I was to be informed later by one of the receptionists that this particular day was noted for its chaotic busyness, an unusually stressful day for all who work there.

From time to time I would take my eyes off the pages of the novel to briefly scrutinize what was happening, as names were called and people in the waiting room were ushered off to examination rooms and others steadily took their places, awaiting their turn for attention. On one occasion I saw exiting the elevators a man in a bright orange jumpsuit, his hands shackled before him, accompanied by two burly plains-clothed security personnel.

My husband, waiting patiently for me down below on the first floor's capacious waiting room, observed the later departure of the trio; the prisoner had been given preferential treatment, was speedily examined and whatever transactions needed to be done, concluded, allowing all three to leave without experiencing the need to wait their 'turn'. Expediting attention and passage and allowing medical staff to continue their professional scrutiny of those who haven't run afoul of the law.

Perhaps leaving some to arrive at the silly conclusion that crime does, after all, pay?