A month or so ago I found myself driving in town when I happened to glance down a side street and got a glimpse of the hospital. I turned my head and wished I could unsee it. It felt like I should put my arms up in one of those gestures that are supposed to ward off evil spirits.
It’s not the hospital’s fault. It’s life’s fault.
For years — decades really — hospitals to me were places I went to have babies. They were where I took the husband after he fell off the second-floor deck while filling a bird feeder or the son who was riding bikes on a sandhill at his friend’s house when he called asking what time I would be picking him up and after the fifth call in a row asking that same question, I asked to speak to the mom and learned he had fallen and hit his head. I not only picked him up, but treated him to a trip to the ER.
But in the last eight years or so, I have been at hospitals more times and for extended periods of time than I can count — not for me, but for family members. Sometimes they were for planned procedures. More often they were emergencies that led to waits in the waiting room and waits in the ER and tests that sometimes led to admissions, but other times didn’t. In one case because they didn’t think an admission was warranted, we spent four days in the ER while the staff worked with us to figure out the best alternative placement.
You do not want to be in an ER for four days. There was no natural light. It is not set up to take care of people’s everyday personal needs like they do inpatients. The staff is great, but needing your teeth brushed or a shower or your hair washed do not qualify as emergencies.
The thing is, being at the hospital so often means you know way too much about it. Different floors and program areas trigger memories that emerge as flashbacks when you walk down a certain hall or find yourself yet again in that same waiting room. There’s one consultation area that gives me heart palpitations every time I walk by because of the hard conversations that took place there.
You know you are there too often when there’s a security guard who recognizes you by name. And you definitely get to know the cafeteria. My go-to is a turkey and cheese sandwich on squishy American wheat bread I would not normally use at home but feels comforting there. My mother loves the malted milk balls they sell in cellophane bags and I have to agree, they’re the best with a thick chocolate coating. Sometimes I think of going just to pick up a bag to surprise her. And then I think, nah. No hospital today.
There’s a specialty coffee shop in the cafeteria but it never seems to be open when I want it to be. One Sunday morning after a long Saturday night, my brother and I went down there and were delighted when we saw an 8 ½-by-11 sign in a plastic frame near the entrance that listed its hours, indicating it was open right then. When we got to the counter, though, it was closed.
As we left, my brother took the sign and flipped it over so the blank side showed out, putting it back in the holder.
When we found ourselves at the hospital again a few weeks later, it was still like that, blank side out.
But every time I’m back there lately, I think of that scene from “The Godfather” when Michael Corleone says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
It’s not that I’m not grateful for the hospital and all it has done to help our family. I am. I know how lucky we are to have a good hospital to turn to when we need it. I just wish we didn’t need it so often — and that I didn’t know it so well.