Drowning (fiction)

I took the longer route to the hospital this morning. It seems rather early for my visit to Nana, an elderly lady stricken with cancer of the uterus. I was thinking I might see the vendor who sells fresh cinnamon rolls every morning and I thought I should get some for Nana. They have become her favorite since the day I first brought her the only bread she used not to eat.

My daily visit to the hospital ward to see the lady in her eighties who’s been ignored mostly by the nurses and her ward mates started on Valentine’s Day last year. I thought I’d do something different so instead of going on a date with my special someone who really wasn’t that special or on a group date with my office mates, I opted to drop by the government hospital near my rented place and just look around.

I am not nor would want to be in the medical profession although as a kid I harbored the dream of being a doctor. Still, I’ve had a lot of experiences in hospitals that the thought of being inside one seems to feel comforting in an odd way. I was a sickly kid while growing up so my parents had to bring me in and out of different hospitals. The smell of antiseptic on freshly mopped floor, the white lights in the corridors, the hospital staff in their scrubs and silent shoes walking past you as they go from room to room, the visitors with their flowers or boxes of cake or goodies, the companion of the patients whose eyes seem to want to fall off from their sockets from tiredness and lack of sleep, and the many other things that you experience inside a hospital are all familiar to me. Interestingly, even if I am entering a hospital for the first time I feel a sense of coming home.

Unlike most people who equate hospital with disease and hopelessness, I see it as a haven for sick people who have faith in their hearts that it is in that place where they will find healing and their health will be restored. People would borrow money, pawn their valuables and go through any length in order to send their sick loved ones to a hospital. Despite diagnosis of imminent atrophy even under the care of the most competent doctors and hospital staff, people go to hospitals for any cure.

Such is the case of Nana. (to be continued)