Visitors

If you ever get lonely, get yourself admitted to the hospital. You are sure to have many visitors! And make sure you remark casually to the nurse admitting you in ER that you have a cold and hope you don’t drip on her by accident. This will get you a bright red sign on your door and even more visitors. All your visitors will keep you entertained by looking very exotic in their bright yellow suits and green gloves and special white masks, and even your regular visitors, who normally look like your husband and your good friend Petal, will now look like extras in an alien movie. Some of these regular visitors will even want to take the special masks home as souvenirs because where else are they going to get souvenirs since they are spending all their time suiting up and visiting you? And besides, these aren’t ordinary mouth masks, no, these are special masks with eye shields, like riot police masks, or like masks you would wear if you were an extra in an alien movie.

And you won’t be able to recognize your nurse from the guy who brings in the water from the lady who swabs down the walls, who, you see through the cracked door, is actually quite lovely but who, suited up, looks like a giant potato. And when she speaks to you, the creases in the mask rearrange themselves so that she looks like she’s wearing a gigantic fake smile, wider than a human face. Like the Joker’s smile or an alien’s.

Your visitors will start coming to see you even before you have wakened properly in the morning. They will lean over you, poke you politely with sharp things (hopefully not their teeth, because that would be the wrong sort of visitor), and take your blood. They will put objects in your ears and under your tongue and around your arms and over your fingers and onto your chest and down your back. What they are muttering through the mask as they work can sometimes be deciphered as a polite apology for causing discomfort, but it is best to listen carefully, as one never knows. When they leave, they shed their costumes neatly at the door in one practiced motion as if they are used to moving in and out of worlds.

The visitors will continue throughout the day. They will come to leave you water and a tray of food. They will come to swab the decks. They will come to leave you medicines in pills, in bottles, and in bags that drip into your arm. They will pick up the tray and change the water. They will ask you indiscreet questions about bodily functions and check for diseases in indiscreet places. One will check on your physical movements while another will check on your occupational movements and take to you a secret room where you must climb a stair that leads straight into a wall. No wonder it is in a secret room.

Surely there are no more people a hospital could hire to come see you, but the stream continues. There are the pharmacy people to question you about your medicine and, sizing you up, to figure they have been wasting antibiotic on you and reduce your dose. There is the floor doctor to decide whether you can survive without him, and your own doctor dressed in celebratory red to congratulate you on going out with a bang, and the disembodied voice to answer your call button, and some kind of manager to check whether all these visitors are treating you ok. Most impressive of all are the “We are members of the Infections Control Team,” to determine whether you pose a threat to humanity.  And I haven’t even mentioned the regular visitors who stop by to see if you are lonely.  Which is unlikely when you are tucked away in such a bastion of hospital-ity. So try to look your best and gather your strength before you get admitted to the hospital. You have a job ahead of you, hosting all your visitors. You might like going home afterwards to get some rest.