golden-mage replied to your post: I’m going to ignore the numbers for a moment. Why…
Try to describe what a hospital is as if the person you’re speaking to doesn’t know? One idea I got: Crossing place, life and death.
Funny you should say that. As the scene begins, I had just left the hospice ward. (Which is why I assumed I was visiting someone.) As I’m walking down the hall towards the elevators, there are other patient rooms to my right. Some of the elderly patients are sitting in wheelchairs by their doors because they want to watch people going to and fro. Some nod or wave at me in greeting, I smile back.
At first there are two storage rooms to my left. The rooms end and the long nurses station begins. The nurses sitting there only look up at me long enough to register I am not one of their charges. All the nurses are in pale blue scrubs with pale blue paper hats.
The floor is supposed to be white tile, but it has that yellow tinge that comes from decades of cleaning and waxing and stains from various liquids spilled from various containers and bodies.
The lower half of the walls are that faded 70’s teal blue that all the psychologists said would be a soothing color to the easily agitated but doesn’t hold its hue for anything. You can see spots that have been touched up recently. The upper half is wallpapered with a solid light cream color but with a cloth like texture to the hand. The texture makes it harder to clean than necessary, but the paper is made to withstand all the chemicals one would find in a hospital, so it cleans up very fast.
There are no posters or decorations on the walls. A basic map of the hospital by the elevators. The coverings on the fluorescent lights are dingy and tinted yellow from age.
It smells like a hospital. The sharp smell of flesh dissolving cleanser with an subtle addition of stale piss and barely concealed fear.
The three nurses that were already at the elevators were in brightly colored scrubs. Two wore cartoon characters. The third wore bright flowers. They came from a different ward on the same floor. I assume a children’s ward because of the scrubs. They chirped at each other about the horrible cafeteria food, and the new regulations that were the old regulations reworded, and the shortage of staff tonight, and why don’t they hire more nurses.
They always need more nurses.
The three nurses that arrived after I did came from the hospice ward. They were tired and felt the meeting was unnecessary and that they had better things to do that be told to encourage their charges to fill out customer surveys when their charges were either medicated to the point of stupor or were trying their hardest to die before the crash cart arrived. They too bitched about the staffing, but not the lack of number. They complained about the lack of compassion. Their charges weren’t meatsacks to be tolerated until they expired. They were people that had lived and knew stories and had lived through what the history books were trying to ignore even now.
They tried to keep it to themselves because a member of the public was present. (Me.) I made myself as invisible and unnoticeable as possible because they deserved to vent, and probably can’t vent to their family at home. I was successful. When they realized I wasn’t paying attention, or stopped caring if I was, they resumed detailing each others woes.
So, this is how the scene begins. With me leaving the hall where people are left to die. I have the sense that I visited someone, but I don’t know who. Only that the visitation went well for the person I visited.
I don’t think I answered your request directly. But once I tapped into the memory of the hospital, the words just started flowing and like hell was I going to dam them up this time.