Do I really want to go there?

God I hate hospitals. I regularly go to a specialist who works out of the local hospital and every time I go in there, I feel a sense of dread. Can people really get well in these places? Each time I walk through the door on my way in, I am reminded of my mortality. It is as if it is immediately re-emphasized. First thing I see upon entering the "lobby" is a wall of metal plaques on brick. Atop this wall are the words "In Memoriam". GREAT!! The Wall of Death!! People have died, donations have been made and they are immortalized by little pieces of metal glued to a brick wall. Did they die here or at home?? Whatever.... it's a depressing thing to see when one walks into a hospital.

After that initial shock, which isn't diminished for me over time nor with repeated visits, maybe I hear EMT's rushing people in through a "side door" on gurneys, maybe I don't. I walk down sickly lit corridors into the depths of the place toward the doctor's "office". The floors are too shiny. The majority of staff that I usually pass, volunteers I warrant, from their flimsy, clear plastic name badges and civvies; they always seem too cheerful. It is disconcerting.

Along the way I hear ominous sounding beeps and blips, seemingly from every room. Sometimes a lost looking soul wearing a faded blue gown and their own shuffly slippers wanders past me with a mobile IV drip. I don't want to look at their faces nor see their pain. They emanate confusion and their auras seem to project a sense of non-belonging.

I continue to walk. There may be a patient lying fast asleep on a hospital bed in a hallway. I don't see them as IN hospital beds, people are ON them. They're waiting for a room... or are they. Were they sleeping? I mentally cross myself as my imagination tries to get the better of me but I walk on and finally reach the waiting "room". It's not a room. It's divet off the freaky hallway and it's directly across from the cancer treatment areas of the place. Nine times out of ten when I am sitting in the waiting "room", the doors to the cancer place are left wide open. Emanating from within are more beeps and blips and I hear everything that's spoken. Why aren't the doors closed? I hear nurses and doctors words and more quietly the voices of patients. Why are the doors open?

Perhaps the decision makers have determined that no lay people have ventured so deeply into the place. Perhaps my doctor's "office" has been forgotten along with the waiting "room".

Ah, the doctor's "office". The only distinction between it and a hospital room is the lack of a bed. At least there's a place to sit down in there behind a closed door with a window and there are shelves with books on them.

I always exit the building via a fire door which is, ironically, only half a hallway away from the "office" and always locked from the outside.

Lord let me die IN my own bed and at home, whenever and wherever that may be.