He stepped out into the cold and stood under the jutting block of stiff material that stuck out above the double doors. The hospital loomed up behind him, its face lit from inside by the electric buzz of fluorescent lights, candles in a vigil for those who might leave, or had left, without stepping through the door.
The hospital was a haunted place. Inside was a dizzying hum of white walls and bright lights and black windows. Rooms full of beeping appliances in plastic casings, expertly constructed and invented tumours that sucked the sickness out or pumped the life in. On wards, between rooms and in halls ambled some of the sick, those who were more able and recovered, their slippers sighing on the tiles, and between them shuffled those who had passed there, memories looking for someone to remember them.
He was there to visit her and he remembered her younger and stronger, someone with a jetblack beehive and a quick-witted and firey nature. Now she was defeated and small, thin and papery in an alien bed, stiff white sheets with tubes running under them from mysterious machines with flickering green lights and still more artificial arteries fed under her skin, hidden beneath dressing so that the bulge of the valve beneath the whisper of skin would not offend. She was alright and he was glad. She was talking and sitting up and, though weak and slow in her movements, she had her wits about her.
Others around her were not so alive. Some lay staring, others appeared comatose with their own technological organs wheezing life into them as they slept unaware. Now and then some quiet, gentle alarm would sing out and he'd crane around to look in some morbid act of rubbernecking, watching a nurse in her blue garb slip subtly behind curtains. The alarm would stop.
The walls of the hospital seemed constructed from the unspoken concept of demise. He thought it perhaps unfair that Death himself was the only being in the understood universe who had been granted eternal life, allowed to forever dance from one living thing to next and snuff them out with wild abandon. Perhaps one day time would stop, the lights of every galaxy would be put out and the reaper would finally feel the blessed sting of his own scythe. There was some great justice in all this that was hidden from him.
But she had been alright and now he was outside. He pulled the hood over his head to shield himself from the weeping night sky. Outside reality felt as if it was settling back in, the shadows creeping about inside, looking to prey on the sick, could not follow him. He thought of her having to sleep in that place and remembered what it had been like. He and everyone else he knew would have to face this again and again as time wore all their bodies away. He hoped she could go home soon and he left.
The hospital was a haunted place. Inside was a dizzying hum of white walls and bright lights and black windows. Rooms full of beeping appliances in plastic casings, expertly constructed and invented tumours that sucked the sickness out or pumped the life in. On wards, between rooms and in halls ambled some of the sick, those who were more able and recovered, their slippers sighing on the tiles, and between them shuffled those who had passed there, memories looking for someone to remember them.
He was there to visit her and he remembered her younger and stronger, someone with a jetblack beehive and a quick-witted and firey nature. Now she was defeated and small, thin and papery in an alien bed, stiff white sheets with tubes running under them from mysterious machines with flickering green lights and still more artificial arteries fed under her skin, hidden beneath dressing so that the bulge of the valve beneath the whisper of skin would not offend. She was alright and he was glad. She was talking and sitting up and, though weak and slow in her movements, she had her wits about her.
Others around her were not so alive. Some lay staring, others appeared comatose with their own technological organs wheezing life into them as they slept unaware. Now and then some quiet, gentle alarm would sing out and he'd crane around to look in some morbid act of rubbernecking, watching a nurse in her blue garb slip subtly behind curtains. The alarm would stop.
The walls of the hospital seemed constructed from the unspoken concept of demise. He thought it perhaps unfair that Death himself was the only being in the understood universe who had been granted eternal life, allowed to forever dance from one living thing to next and snuff them out with wild abandon. Perhaps one day time would stop, the lights of every galaxy would be put out and the reaper would finally feel the blessed sting of his own scythe. There was some great justice in all this that was hidden from him.
But she had been alright and now he was outside. He pulled the hood over his head to shield himself from the weeping night sky. Outside reality felt as if it was settling back in, the shadows creeping about inside, looking to prey on the sick, could not follow him. He thought of her having to sleep in that place and remembered what it had been like. He and everyone else he knew would have to face this again and again as time wore all their bodies away. He hoped she could go home soon and he left.