Why is it that hospitals reinforce the notion of human frailty instead of human strength?  They wheel otherwise ambulatory patients to rooms to begin treatment, making the patient feel even more vulnerable than they already did by virtue of their ailment.  There is no IV started yet, no anesthesia administered, only the donned gaping and flimsy hospital gown indicating that the patient’s treatment has started in some way.

Treatment of the patient’s illusion of control or of remaining health, I suspect, has begun.

Entire families come and wait for mundane procedures to be performed on their loved ones, as if they were attending some sort of entertainment like a sporting event.  The waiting room is over-crowded in no small part because of this; although 20 to 25 percent of seats remain open, nearly every cluster of persons violate the personal space of others as they wait.  Many of us who wait by ourselves sans family would rather be alone in our wait.  I can see it in the furtive looks of the other single waiters, the same restlessness I feel at being corralled and herded with strangers at this time.  But aides tell me I cannot leave this area since they need someone immediately on hand if there are issues during the surgery. 

So here I sit, cheek and jowl with what surely is the average American family, and one of the stupider ones at that.  Mother chatters away aimlessly; is this a coping mechanism, or is this her normal prattling?  Based on the reactions of others in her pod, I suspect it is “normal”.  I want to stuff her head under a chair cushion to put her out of our misery.  She is playing a vocabulary exercise using what appears to be a tattered Readers’ Digest, asking her pod members whether they wish or not what the best definition is for the word at hand.  I try to drown her out, drown out the circus of noise in this foyer-adjacent area, try to lose myself in my book but to no avail.

Palazzo, she asks, stumblingly; the double z in the word gives her trouble.  She asks whether the word means a market space, a large building, or some other two choices that I can’t hear over the rumble of a cart passing by.  The members of the pod mumble their thoughts out loud.  I think it’s a market space, says the woman who appears to be a sister; the man sitting next to her, probably a brother-in-law, waits familiarly for the two women to thrash over the guessed answer before he picks a third answer.  I am going to be driven out of my skin by this.  PALAZZO!  I scream inside my head; THIS ITALIAN WORD SHARES THE SAME ROOT AS PALACE!!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT A F*CKING PALACE IS?? The rant inside me continues as I struggle to focus on my book and on my notes.  They never make the connection and are surprised by the answer when the mother-type peeks at key at the end of quiz.  Fop, the mother-type asks her innocuous and bland pod partners, throwing out four more options that seem equally likely to them.  Yes, these people are equally likely to think the word “fop” means a type of tropical fish, a farm implement, or a dandy man; I can hear every f*cking word of their placid, mealy–mouthed debate over the relative merits of each definition, feel their labored breathing as they chew their popcorn and talk over each potential answer, even as the very manifestation of the word “fop” oozes by in his over-tidy suit and purple tie, flashing his manicure and diamond ring at the admissions desk staff in a flowery wave.  I want to point and yell, THERE!! RIGHT THERE!!  A FOP!!  THAT’S A F*CKING FOP, YOU MORONS!!!  NOTE THE LACK OF FINS OR POWER TAKE-OFF!!!

I will surely go insane while serving my sentence in this room, beating these too close and too stupid people to death with a copy of Jared Diamond’s Collapse and a steno pad; I will surely put out the eyes of the chattering mother with my pen before I finish scrawling a note about Easter Islands’ deforestation.

Just this once, I wish I smoked; I could leave this area with a compulsion to have a cigarette out of doors away from this corral of humanity, joining the much smaller number of people who lurk in silence, wearing a far-away look as they nurse their cigarettes hungrily outside the foyer of the hospital entrance.  Maybe this is why these smokers cling so tightly to their smoking; it offers both mental and physical escape with a flourish of a lighter.

Note to self, scratched in my steno pad: be sure to bring the headphones and MP3 player next time.  If we ever have to do this again, heaven forbid.

My spouse is beyond ken at this moment. (KEN, I scream inside my head as the pod waivers, WITH A LITTLE “K”, MEANING KNOWLEDGE!!! USE IT IN A SENTENCE, IDIOTS!!!  They select the answer, “a well-known family member” anyhow…).  Hubby is blissfully sleeping away at this time as the surgeon and staff work on him.  I picture him trussed up like a turkey, spread out on the gurney like a Thanksgiving dinner platter as they work away, basted with tubes and sprinkle with a garniture of wires and electrodes and tape.  The hardest part he’ll endure will be the prep before the sedation.  He was wheeled out of a quiet room occupied only by the two of us, into another quiet room occupied only by him and the anesthetist.  He’ll be wheeled back into yet another quiet room occupied by him alone until they call me from this holding tank and tell me I can join him in that quiet room.

I am envious for a moment.  Or two.  There is no envying the pain that will come with healing that begins once he reaches that third quiet room.

The clocks appear to be stuck.  I am sure this is just my imagination; it’s not possible that every one of these same Hamilton black-letters-on-white-faced clocks sprinkled about this area can be stuck.  I cannot imagine aliens stopping time and whisking me away at this very moment, freezing time as they abduct me.  Unless aliens have a really twisted sense of humor…

Come to think of it, the aides at the desk are rather automaton-like; their arms wave at me like feelers or antennae as they gesture to me to pick up the phone wherein the surgeon’s calm voice waits. 

Why is it that hospitals have to be white?  Sure, I understand that white connotes cleanliness – but this is an illusion.  White linoleum laid in the foyer of this lobby with a steady stream of people walking over it from the sidewalk to the admissions desk to the elevator is NOT clean.  It is teaming with microscopic and not-so-microscopic organisms.  And everything else save for the carpet and seating in the waiting area is white as well; I feel snow-blind as I wend my way back to the elevators and through the departments and wards to the quiet room where my husband recovers.  Landmarks in this whiteness are inadequate, too; all the signs for every department and floor are the same burgundy plastic with white letters.  How do people with less than normal sight find their way in this blizzard of white melamine and whiter Formica and repetitive burgundy punctuation?

A bright-looking young man catches the attention of the first person wearing anything resembling a uniform and asks which white hallway leads to the human resource department.  The uniformed person is kind enough to point in the general direction, but their look says it all: don’t waste your time, you didn’t make the cut, you just failed the test.  I look away as he enters the elevator next to mine.  I can’t tell from the burgundy plastic signage, but I think he’s on the wrong elevator.

We refuse the wheelchair ride to the foyer after he has been released from recovery.  I cannot be certain of the degree of his recovery if he is wheeled down to the front door; he will feel awkward, self-conscious if he is forced into a wheelchair, even if he is still groggy and slow from the sedation.  We make our way back slowly through the white out, past the still-chattering vocabulary-challenged family, past a couple of wordless smokers and out into the sun.

I would run if I could, into the cool and oak-treed park across the street where my spouse and I used to while away our lunch hours when we were dating twenty summers ago.  I should have walked him slowly across the street to that familiar bench on the lawn instead. 

But instead I pulled the car up to the sidewalk, holding my breath as he eased into the car.

5:29:47 PM    comment []