There is a man who cleans the floors here (occasionally there may be a woman), he is
often very old and sometimes very young but he is always mopping, always waxing, and always
indifferent. The walls are white here, the modern walls harbor small wave-like designs of opaque
colors but the usual patterns are simply speckles of blues and greens—colors to keep all patients
cool, calm, and collected even while bleeding—the skirting boards often vary from white to pale
The chairs are old and the cushions are flat and outworn with rips and tears in the fabric,
often missing bits and pieces of cotton, and they hide near the vending machines which are
constantly restocked. There are tables in the vicinity with year-old magazines which lie in ruins
due to the constant handling of random passersby.
People are not happy here; people cry here, people hate this place, they are sometimes
waiting in the ICU staring down at their shoes, in prayer maybe, with folded hands and bowed
heads.
People create a slow blue jazz rhythm that hums continually throughout the waiting
room. As the husband taps his fingers on his arm rest his foot becomes the bass of the song that
vibrates through everyone.
Couples huddle together whispering things like “How long?” and “What now?”
The corridors reek of piss and random antiseptics; depending on which floor is entered
there are usually two overwhelmingly huge windows down the end of each corridor. These
corridors encompass many sectors where patients lie on beds with needles in veins and ECG
electrodes plastered to their skin. Silence passes through the mouths of most loved ones leaving
those in waiting nearly devastated.
My boyfriend’s grandmother is in Hospice and we are waiting for the doctors to tell us
good news—any news. His father bears red and tired eyes. His mother cups head in her hands.
Out of five aunts and uncles only one showed up—he is bald and hides his head under a baseball
cap as he checks the time in his cell phone.
When his grandmother finally wakes up, she looks around at her children and her
grandchildren. She searches the room of uneasy faces. As she takes a breath she coughs and
hacks up phlegm that drips onto her hospital gown. I look away only for a moment as her
daughter wipes it away and attempts to give her a sip of water. She protests and says in Spanish
that she can do it herself. With shaky hands she holds onto the cup and takes a sip of water and
eventually spills the entirety of the cups content on herself. Her daughter swears in English and
comes over to clean her mother’s neckline, water continues to spill everywhere.
The janitor could be seen mopping the floors from outside of his grandmother’s room.
Swishing his mop as he quietly passed us by. My boyfriend stares at the speckled floor in a daze
as his grandmother is being attended to. He has this stressed looked upon his face, his eyes dance
from each of his family members, his right knee bounces crazily, and his hands are tightly
clasped together.
When the cleanup is done, his grandma takes a deep breath and looks around again. She
notices that I am sitting in the corner next to her grandson. She recognizes me and says ‘Hello,’
and asked me how I am. I tell her I am okay and ask her how she is feeling. She shrugs her
shoulders. That is as far as the conversation goes simply because she can only speak Spanish and
I can only speak English.
Soon enough visiting hours are over and we have to leave. I kiss her cheek and tell her
goodnight. As my boyfriend and I walk through the hospital corridors. The music starts to play
as we leave the building. Every moment of silence is amplified by the echo of our footsteps,
which are in sync. Each sigh that my boyfriend exhales, I inhale it with a hearty blue rhythm.
The sound of the sadness courses through our veins as we tiptoe towards our exit, humming in
the elevator, and chiming when we reach the next floor. Blue hues and blue harmonies follow us
everywhere we go. We walk down the hallway into the lobby where we return our ‘guests’
badges and wait for the attendant to sign us out. Out misery, out of the hospital.
There is a dining area where people have gathered, older and younger faces wait on an
assembly line to pick up food to pass the time. The cashier ‘ka-chings’ to the waltz like music of
his customer’s footsteps as the move forward, grab a tray, grab a drink, pay and walk away. I
watch them from a far; time has slowed for me as the desk attendant goes through her
paperwork. Men and women drag out noisy plastic chairs that screech across the tiles on the
floor. Almost reminding me of the sound of trumpets, the play left, they play right. When the
patrons scoot in the table moves like a heavy drum and there trays scrape like maracas. I begin to
feel as if the music isn’t so sad anymore. It has become lively as the people are preparing to add
food to their stomachs. Children jingle as they see their meals and parents smile promisingly.
A man walks past us and exhales a heavy breath that returns me to the song of sadness.
The woman in the gift shop that stands behind the counter holds a smile. As her customer makes
a purchase the smile is gone. The woman leaving the gift store is holding a teddy bear that has a
velvet red heart in its hands; it reads “I Love You!” The janitor of the lobby stands talking to a
security guard, about what, I couldn’t say, but neither of them was smiling. A nurse walks into
the building with a bag that reeks of ethnic food; the plastic fibers of her bag remind me of a coat
being zipped. Her footsteps are slow, the janitor speaks quietly, and the sadness hovers.
My boyfriend wakes me from my illusion with a tap on the arm. I look at him and say
thank you to the hostess. We begin to walk out the sliding entrance doors that cry as they say
goodbye. They need to be sprayed with WD-40. He holds my hand only for a moment and then
lets it go. His fingers, sweaty as they slip away and we walk to the walkway outside the hospital,
the sky is a dark indigo because it has been raining. I turn back to stare at the building as he
walks slowly to the car.
The lights hardly ever shut off here nor are they ever dim, it would be wrong to ever dare
to compare this place to a 24-hour 7-Eleven because no one is ever happy here, the true brain
freezes exist here, the true drooling sensation is found here, and the late nights are inevitable.
The nights are more lackluster than the next.
Descending peaks are displayed on heart monitors and the repetitive song they play
ricochet off the walls reaching those who are in states of anxiety.
In this building that is miles high with more than two thousand windows, there is a
constant rhythm to beginnings and endings; rainy days do not make it any better and the silence
is never comforting yet everyone seems to raise their heads when the nurse arrives—the
anticipation is killing them.
However, happiness is born here.
The waiting room alone is home to many things, but in the end the room is a patch work
of metaphors that can only be unraveled during a time of need.
often very old and sometimes very young but he is always mopping, always waxing, and always
indifferent. The walls are white here, the modern walls harbor small wave-like designs of opaque
colors but the usual patterns are simply speckles of blues and greens—colors to keep all patients
cool, calm, and collected even while bleeding—the skirting boards often vary from white to pale
The chairs are old and the cushions are flat and outworn with rips and tears in the fabric,
often missing bits and pieces of cotton, and they hide near the vending machines which are
constantly restocked. There are tables in the vicinity with year-old magazines which lie in ruins
due to the constant handling of random passersby.
People are not happy here; people cry here, people hate this place, they are sometimes
waiting in the ICU staring down at their shoes, in prayer maybe, with folded hands and bowed
heads.
People create a slow blue jazz rhythm that hums continually throughout the waiting
room. As the husband taps his fingers on his arm rest his foot becomes the bass of the song that
vibrates through everyone.
Couples huddle together whispering things like “How long?” and “What now?”
The corridors reek of piss and random antiseptics; depending on which floor is entered
there are usually two overwhelmingly huge windows down the end of each corridor. These
corridors encompass many sectors where patients lie on beds with needles in veins and ECG
electrodes plastered to their skin. Silence passes through the mouths of most loved ones leaving
those in waiting nearly devastated.
My boyfriend’s grandmother is in Hospice and we are waiting for the doctors to tell us
good news—any news. His father bears red and tired eyes. His mother cups head in her hands.
Out of five aunts and uncles only one showed up—he is bald and hides his head under a baseball
cap as he checks the time in his cell phone.
When his grandmother finally wakes up, she looks around at her children and her
grandchildren. She searches the room of uneasy faces. As she takes a breath she coughs and
hacks up phlegm that drips onto her hospital gown. I look away only for a moment as her
daughter wipes it away and attempts to give her a sip of water. She protests and says in Spanish
that she can do it herself. With shaky hands she holds onto the cup and takes a sip of water and
eventually spills the entirety of the cups content on herself. Her daughter swears in English and
comes over to clean her mother’s neckline, water continues to spill everywhere.
The janitor could be seen mopping the floors from outside of his grandmother’s room.
Swishing his mop as he quietly passed us by. My boyfriend stares at the speckled floor in a daze
as his grandmother is being attended to. He has this stressed looked upon his face, his eyes dance
from each of his family members, his right knee bounces crazily, and his hands are tightly
clasped together.
When the cleanup is done, his grandma takes a deep breath and looks around again. She
notices that I am sitting in the corner next to her grandson. She recognizes me and says ‘Hello,’
and asked me how I am. I tell her I am okay and ask her how she is feeling. She shrugs her
shoulders. That is as far as the conversation goes simply because she can only speak Spanish and
I can only speak English.
Soon enough visiting hours are over and we have to leave. I kiss her cheek and tell her
goodnight. As my boyfriend and I walk through the hospital corridors. The music starts to play
as we leave the building. Every moment of silence is amplified by the echo of our footsteps,
which are in sync. Each sigh that my boyfriend exhales, I inhale it with a hearty blue rhythm.
The sound of the sadness courses through our veins as we tiptoe towards our exit, humming in
the elevator, and chiming when we reach the next floor. Blue hues and blue harmonies follow us
everywhere we go. We walk down the hallway into the lobby where we return our ‘guests’
badges and wait for the attendant to sign us out. Out misery, out of the hospital.
There is a dining area where people have gathered, older and younger faces wait on an
assembly line to pick up food to pass the time. The cashier ‘ka-chings’ to the waltz like music of
his customer’s footsteps as the move forward, grab a tray, grab a drink, pay and walk away. I
watch them from a far; time has slowed for me as the desk attendant goes through her
paperwork. Men and women drag out noisy plastic chairs that screech across the tiles on the
floor. Almost reminding me of the sound of trumpets, the play left, they play right. When the
patrons scoot in the table moves like a heavy drum and there trays scrape like maracas. I begin to
feel as if the music isn’t so sad anymore. It has become lively as the people are preparing to add
food to their stomachs. Children jingle as they see their meals and parents smile promisingly.
A man walks past us and exhales a heavy breath that returns me to the song of sadness.
The woman in the gift shop that stands behind the counter holds a smile. As her customer makes
a purchase the smile is gone. The woman leaving the gift store is holding a teddy bear that has a
velvet red heart in its hands; it reads “I Love You!” The janitor of the lobby stands talking to a
security guard, about what, I couldn’t say, but neither of them was smiling. A nurse walks into
the building with a bag that reeks of ethnic food; the plastic fibers of her bag remind me of a coat
being zipped. Her footsteps are slow, the janitor speaks quietly, and the sadness hovers.
My boyfriend wakes me from my illusion with a tap on the arm. I look at him and say
thank you to the hostess. We begin to walk out the sliding entrance doors that cry as they say
goodbye. They need to be sprayed with WD-40. He holds my hand only for a moment and then
lets it go. His fingers, sweaty as they slip away and we walk to the walkway outside the hospital,
the sky is a dark indigo because it has been raining. I turn back to stare at the building as he
walks slowly to the car.
The lights hardly ever shut off here nor are they ever dim, it would be wrong to ever dare
to compare this place to a 24-hour 7-Eleven because no one is ever happy here, the true brain
freezes exist here, the true drooling sensation is found here, and the late nights are inevitable.
The nights are more lackluster than the next.
Descending peaks are displayed on heart monitors and the repetitive song they play
ricochet off the walls reaching those who are in states of anxiety.
In this building that is miles high with more than two thousand windows, there is a
constant rhythm to beginnings and endings; rainy days do not make it any better and the silence
is never comforting yet everyone seems to raise their heads when the nurse arrives—the
anticipation is killing them.
However, happiness is born here.
The waiting room alone is home to many things, but in the end the room is a patch work
of metaphors that can only be unraveled during a time of need.
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