I began working at a hospital this week. It's an easy enough job filled with long stretches of boredom and occasional moments of hectic calamity. I see people with their scalps sewn back together, feeble and meek, stuffed delicately into cars to go home. I see blood and bruises. Tumors protruding under skin. Iodine stains.
Wheel chairs. Lots of wheel chairs.
Visitors come with grim expression and they also come with optimism. I don't know their stories and I don't ask, but sometimes they tell me anyway. Spectators mingling with other spectators...
The patients though, that's where I see the real suffering and the ordeal. The sudden changes of health bring on a frantic energy - the rush to get to the emergency room, where they get to sit for three hours and listen to The Price is Right and other such shit. More often than that, I see patients teeter along on walkers or sometimes using their rolling IV stands like walking sticks. They come outside, light cigarettes and quietly face the cold.
Wheel chairs. Lots of wheel chairs.
Visitors come with grim expression and they also come with optimism. I don't know their stories and I don't ask, but sometimes they tell me anyway. Spectators mingling with other spectators...
The patients though, that's where I see the real suffering and the ordeal. The sudden changes of health bring on a frantic energy - the rush to get to the emergency room, where they get to sit for three hours and listen to The Price is Right and other such shit. More often than that, I see patients teeter along on walkers or sometimes using their rolling IV stands like walking sticks. They come outside, light cigarettes and quietly face the cold.
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