Optimism was flowing through me on the journey there. I'm not sure why, it seems to strike at the oddest of times. It was an unseasonably warm autumnal day and the sun's rays flooded the bus handing out a little bit of extra joy to anyone that bothered to notice. Physically I felt light yet strong, an ever fleeting feeling as my age tumbles slowly upwards, so one must enjoy.
I always feel like a hospital is a good place to come to if you need a mental “check in”. It does however require you to compartmentalise the actual reason you’ve ended up in the hospital in the first place. Food is provided, there’s a clean bed and your calendar is suddenly empty for the foreseeable future. Hospitals provide you with plenty of time to ponder and a certain pace of life that has a knack to kickstart your reflecting gears into action.
In hospitals you get thrust together with such a random group of humans. You are all tied together by a thin fragile string of ailments and illnesses. From my experience it’s rarely obvious why people have ended up here. You naturally want to make assumptions but I've been wrong too many times that I've stopped guessing. Books and covers and judging — you know the old adage.
There is a certain quiet metronomic beat to a hospital. The employees all have their assigned tasks and they quietly go about their business. A nurse making up a bed ready for a new resident, a runner pushing the next patient along always ready with a quick retort and the middle aged slightly overweight man bringing the new rounds of tea. Large tubs of weakened Rose Hip tea placed delicately on the edge of the counter, the occasional drip reminding you of their existence. All these humans in their outfits leave a deep impression and yet remarkably they all go home at night and live normal lives.
You forget this though when staying in the hospital. In hospital your thoughts are centered around you. You’re the one that needs the treatment after all. The nurses glide into the room in their outfits taking care of so many little things you barely have time to think what problems they may have. They are the unsung heroes in the hospital business and without them the whole thing would fall apart. They are the grease that allow the wheels to keep turning and the lights to keep burning.
There’s the podgy nurse with the luscious blond hair flowing down her back who carries an oh-so-sweet scent in her wake. It stirs some feelings in my groin which seem strangely out of place in this setting. A hospital is not a place one gets horny is it? It seems almost entirely inappropriate and in some ways a little absurd. Here we are, supposedly in a place to concentrate and mend our health, and yet we still can’t help it when carnality pops up its eager little head.
One of the patients is an Indian man with a catheter hanging glaringly from his waist. He's young and looks healthy, almost radiant but there’s obviously something not quite right. His green emerald ring glinting on his finger is king-like in its majesty. I wonder what he does outside these walls. He heats his food for a remarkably long time in the microwave, it must be roasting. And then he carries it nonchalantly away, an Apple airpod sat snuggly in his ear. He wouldn’t look out of place walking around a corporate office having just heated his lunch. Except the catheter of course.
There are such a wide cacophony of sounds reverberating throughout this building. From high pitched incessant beeping to low pitched eternal humming. From the unwanted songs from the aged rocker in the next bed to the overgrown man-child playing commando on Call of Duty sitting cross legged for hours on his bed. How one is supposed to recuperate when listening to endless gunfire is beyond me. The squeak of rubber soles on the pristine floor and the quiet knock on the door to which you never know what will follow. All these sounds foisting for your attention.
There is also the nervousness. It’s not all laying around pontificating about your current situation in life. There is also going to be some pain or at least some discomfort involved. And that’s always lurking somewhere in the back of your mind. It randomly sends little reminders into your consciousness and when it does you do your best to reason about it. You tell yourself the story you need to hear to get you through each tough moment.
I find the blood transferring out my body fascinating. I know some people get squeamish but it completely hypnotises me. The quick flow. The trickle of this thin deep red liquid into plastic tubes which can reveal so much. A glimpse into your current internal state. Clues lurking in the numbers as to what may be causing that symptom that brought you here in the first place. Quite amazing the story these little numbers can tell. Little whispers into the doctors ears that can have so much impact.
Then the pregnant doctor comes to deliver today’s verdict. The influence these doctors hold over you in this place is deceptively powerful. What they utter to you as they make their rounds can either catapult you high into the atmosphere or pummel you face first into the rough dirt. Today I seem to have a favourable light shining on me. The rouge on the doctors cheeks is a little overdone and it leaves the impression of her overdressing for the role. That along with her slender frame take away a little from her authority. That’s probably why her delivery of speech is overly severe. An unconscious compensation for the questioning looks from patients maybe? She stands over me waiting impatiently as she takes my blood pressure. It's high. It's always high. You can see the disappointment and frustration in the doctors eye, once again I have let them down.
I feel a certain safeness in this place. I live in a constant state of worry you see. Worry that something bad will happen - a nurse once labelled it "disaster thinking". I guess ultimately I want to be prepared when the disaster does finally strike because deep in my belly I know it will. Some days are worse than others. But here, here I can finally relax because this is the place I ultimately fear. Not the place itself but what it means for my health for me to end up here. But when you get here and you adjust to the pace it’s really not that bad. The pace here is like the pace of a contented beating heart. It’s the pace you realise you should be living your life at.
That's when you realise how busy and hectic the “real” world is. People hustling and bustling about their lives, heads down and focused on their own paths. Captivated by whatever idea happened to land in their heads and navigating towards some self imagined goal in the best way they see fit. It really becomes apparent the moment you leave the hospital. When you leave the safe seclusion and are thrust back into the noisy everyday mayhem. It’s like leaving a quiet secluded side street and entering the fast lane of the busiest motorway. In the "real" world there are no warming looks from strangers, no encouraging smiles or shows of support. No, out here it’s each man for themselves and don’t you dare get in their way.
As I lay on my bed after a gruelling day of resting I do feel lucky, in my own way. Maybe it’s the peace of the place. Giving my mind the space and room it needs to breathe like a red wine being allowed to air in a decanter. Your thoughts finally have time to expand and unfurl. Given room to stretch out their legs and wiggle their toes. And these thoughts then flow down through the rest of the body like water trickling down a rocky cliff face on a sunny day. Yes, this wasn't so bad after all. I can certainly think of worse places to be.
