Rounds

         Of course I am everywhere and all at once, but I find myself curiously drawn to hospitals. As far as a place, the hospital is really no different from anywhere else in the world—an airplane, a car, a hotel, a restaurant, or even a golf course. Yet every time I enter a hospital—sometimes with the breeze through the lobby doors, sometimes with the same rush as a surgical team answering a page to the emergency room, and sometimes as silent as a coma patient—I notice a difference I have trouble articulating.

         It always happens very quickly, no more than a second or two, but within that time frame I visit every floor, every wing, and every room of the building. I am in the Intensive Care Wing, with walls so white it gives evening shift nurse Betty Rubbard a headache. I walk by her as she rubs her temples. She is on her way to Bobby Higgens’ room. I have stopped by Bobby’s room before—a couple of times—but I haven’t yet felt the need to stand by his bedside and give him that final caress. Bobby is fifteen years old. One night, a while back, he snuck out of his room, out of his house and ran through a downpour to meet his girlfriend. I don’t just mean rain, here. I’m talking about raindrops so thick that if you squint just right you can almost see each individual drop, and the rain pounded the ground hard enough to make pinpoint splashes. Bobby met his girlfriend, and they made a clumsy attempt at groping each other through the night. The next day Bobby developed a persistent cough.

         I follow Nurse Rubbard for a bit. My hand brushes against a plant on the nurse’s station desk and the leaves wither. I only have enough time to watch Nurse Rubbard walk into Bobby’s room and look at his vital signs, displayed as lines, bars, and graphs on a monitor. Bobby has aggressive pneumonia, which is difficult for an adult to overcome. Bobby’s team of Doctors—one in charge of his case, a pulmonary specialist, a cardiologist, and a renal specialist—have collectively agreed to give Bobby two more weeks to live, at the most. The couple sitting, huddling in the corner, are Bobby’s parents. They are groping each other for entirely different reasons than Bobby and his girlfriend. Perhaps it is cold in this room, although I feel no chill. Perhaps they can sense my momentary visit, and they are attempting to harness their light to dispel the dark. They are muttering prayers, perhaps in the vain hope that a greater power than I will intervene. It’s happened before, plenty of times.

         Enough. I have tallied long enough, and Bobby’s parents should know I am beyond such naïve concepts as good or evil. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not an errand boy.
         Sometimes people think I am the answer to their prayers. I leave the ICU, glide down the hall, turn left, halfway down that hall, down two floors, and I am at Post-Op Recovery. Here Janet Ferlon visits her husband, John—Johnny, as she calls him. He has just come through liver transplant surgery for the second time. A member of the surgical team—dressed head to foot in emerald green—places her hand over Janet’s as she reads her husband’s vitals.

         “It’ll be O.K., Mrs. Ferlon,” she says. “He’ll pull through.”

         As the woman leaves, Janet’s upper body collapses over her husband’s chest as she begins to sob. I turn for a moment to watch two more members of the team—one, the surgeon who actually performed the transplant—smile at their apparent confirmation of a job well done. As they shake hands, however, I turn back in time to witness Janet begin to rip the IV lines out of her husband. One in his hand—just above the left wrist—one in his groin, and then she begins to scream as she tugs on her husband’s chest IV needle. The surgeons who were patting each other on the back an instant ago spring forward and run toward Janet.

         But I’m faster. And Janet is faster, still.

         Janet succeeds in removing the needle. Blood sprays through me to the doctors. I touch the husband on his side as they get to him. Janet’s sobs turn to mutters and broken whispers of gratitude.

         “What the hell happened to me?” the husband’s specter is staring in disbelief.

         “You are a wife beater, John Ferlon,” I reply. “And you have been judged by your victim. Away with you.” I dismiss him with a wave. I can hear the echo of his soul’s scream as he fades.

         Down the long corridor, turning left, down fifty feet, up one floor, and into the psychiatric wing I arrive for my last appointment in this place. They keep this wing of the hospital devoid of color—as they do in all hospitals—so as not to upset the patients. In reality, it draws attention to the fact that the patients in this wing are very much abnormal.

         I travel to the last door on the left and enter. There, strapped to the bed, is Rachel Tomes, 34, looking like she’s 54. Greasy black hair partially hides her wide, staring eyes. Her face is a mess of cuts and gashes and scabs. They had to restrain her after she decided she could do without her face—she broke a mirror in her room and began to slash her face with one of the glass shards.

         “Oh my God, he’s here,” she screams, looking straight at me. “He’s here, he’s here, he’s come for me and I’m not ready.” She wails.

         I’m not here for her, of course.

         Her Doctor—a heavyset man in his fifties—tries to follow her panicked, desperate stare. He can’t see me. Yet. His name is Henry Taggert, and after he graduated medical school, he felt he had done enough exercising—running here and there as an intern. Problem was, he still continued to eat his foods that were too high in cholesterol. Had he done a family history and diagnosis on himself, he would have discovered heart disease made an appearance in his family history. His Great Grandfather died of it at age sixty-two.

         Henry will beat him by a full decade.

         Quickly, I walk by him and brush his side. Just as quickly, Henry shudders as if he was just dropped naked in the middle of the arctic. He manages to force a strangled scream, then drops to the floor. He’s survived by his wife and two kids.

         I leave the room as Rachel screams and I pass orderlies running down the hallway as I leave the hospital. I am finished with my rounds here today.

* * *

         Today I am at the hospital, again (I’m sorry, I understand some sort of time reference may be helpful to you, but such things, quite obviously, mean nothing to me), and it is a busy day in the intensive care wing. I visit the room of Casey Walker, 56, and her family. It is her family’s room as well, because, for the last ten weeks, they have practically shared it with her. Her son and daughter know these halls almost as well as I, you can see it in their eyes as they walk the hallways—there is a dimness about them that suggests autopilot. Casey’s husband is on a first name basis with the hospital cafeteria workers. The staff—nurses, doctors, specialists, interns, candystripers, all of them—they walk by the room without a second glance, as if the entire family were in a coma, not just Casey.

         The son constantly remembers a conversation he and his mother had the weekend before she slipped into darkness. She told him she was trying to get over a cold—that was what it must’ve been, because she felt weak, and “under the weather”. Two days later she landed in the emergency room with tubes and machines breathing for her. She was diagnosed with Scleroderma, a little-known disease that’s just now making the spotlight. In simple terms, her skin began to tighten—so much so that it felt as hard as plaster. Her insides began to harden and stiffen, like month old bread. Complications began to multiply quickly—Casey had a stroke three weeks after her admittance. She had to be on dialysis after six weeks, and today, she’s two thirds finished with her blood cleansing.

         Sometimes I make the decisions, when families are too numb to do so. I move and brush the back of my hand against the bottom of Casey’s feet, just as her husband is pulling the bed sheets over them.

         “Her feet are always cold,” he mutters.

         As the monitors change their speech from beeps to flat buzzing, and the trauma team moves in the room, I pass by a nurse, and watch her quickly shudder out of the corner of my eye as I enter Paul Jeffries’ room. Paul, 12 years old, thought he’d surprise his parents last Saturday morning by mowing the front lawn without being told. He was about finished when he tripped over a rock and his midsection collided with the steel bars of the mower handle. He’s in intensive care with internal bleeding. His team of doctors and specialists are unsure where the wound is. Today is not his day, but I’ll be back before the week is out.

         I suppose if one were to judge, or have something akin to what you call “conscience”, you might say that this day is particularly harsh for the hospital: Two newborns from the seventh floor nursery, one burn victim from the third floor trauma wing, one choking victim in the cafeteria (first floor, past the elevators), and three from the emergency room—all involved in a freeway accident less than a mile from here.

         And then there’s Bobby Higgens.

         Oh, I am not here for him today, either. I stand in his room, amazed, as I hear his doctor tell his family that his condition is still touch and go. His chances? Improved, to about fifty percent. Like flipping a coin, and that’s an improvement. Why is this boy fighting so hard? Casey Walker fought for ten weeks and lost, what makes this boy think he can fare any better?

         As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I am curiously drawn to hospitals, and I believe this is why: There is so much hope here. You find it among the mangled, disfigured, and scarred bodies. At times, you find it more among those who watch over those bodies—the families, the hospital staff, the doctors and surgeons. It fills this place, makes the walls practically burst. In this building of pain and misery, hope shines as bright as any searchlight.

         Why?

* * *

         Today I am at the hospital, again. I discharge my one and only patient for the day—Pam Weinhaven, a twenty-six year old drug overdose in the ER who had no one to lean on—before I fly up two flights to Intensive Care.

         Bobby Higgens is sitting in bed. There are no tubes in him, just one IV attached to the back of his hand—standard issue for all hospital patients. His family and girlfriend are all smiles as the doctor tells them he wants Bobby to stay for another couple of days, but then he can go home. He will be back to perfect health inside a week.

         “How can this be?” I whisper, even though I know no one can hear me. I feel the hope again; it crashes against me in waves. It presses against me from all sides, and why not? News of Bobby has spread through the wing, and other patients are now drawing strength from it.

         As I watch Bobby get up and walk around his room, dragging his IV stand, the thought pops in my head that I really am just an errand boy after all. And you, all of you, knew that the whole time. I suppose I knew it, as well, on some level. I just forget from time to time.

         I smile at Bobby. I’ll see you again sometime, my friend, but not today. Not today.

         I am everywhere and all at once, this is true. Unlike an airplane, car, or a golf course, hospitals offer an opportunity for a level playing field when you are facing me. Sometimes, even when I think you will lose, you end up proving me wrong.

         Sometimes, even I can be surprised while making my rounds.