Nosocomephobia: the excessive fear of hospitals
My grandfather told me, “Frank, be careful of women who have pretty yet hateful eyes.”
I mean, it felt obvious. You do not want to invite that sort of hateful person into your life. It was a simple request. No one can hide that part of themselves for exceptionally long, especially if they wear it obviously on their face. A piece of advice from an old dying man. He even went so far as to remind me of this on his deathbed. I wish I would have taken the time back then to listen. He saw something on me, a mark. An ill-fated freckle of chance that grew into cancer as I got older.
He did not have a name for her back then. A woman with beautiful and hateful eyes was all he could describe her as to me. He died when I was ten. It is easy to forget about things said in passing. Youth is often wasted on pursuing things that do not matter, and wisdom does it no good. It is easy to forget without the reminders, and the flood of other memories I wanted to have of him. I wanted to remember him as a strong man who worked hard every day, and not the feeble stranger he became in the hospital. I had forgotten about it until I got sick. I wish I would have listened more closely to him in his final days.
Her name is Nora and she works the third shift at Grace Medical. If she finishes her rounds tonight, I will not see the sunrise tomorrow.
I arrived at Grace Medical about two weeks ago with a high fever, an upset stomach, and a cough that I just could not get rid of. I had been living with those symptoms for about a week. I chalked them up at first to smoking and maybe some food poisoning. During my drives to different fields to survey I smoked. When I was not smoking, I was usually eating greasy food I bought with the loose-change in my pocket. Washing it all down with black gas-station coffee. I slogged through damp mornings and misty evenings during this Spring. Shielding myself from the sloshing sprays of car tires, and mildew-smelling air. I struggled for breath between cigarette breaks. Something I was half-expecting sooner rather than later. It was when I found myself distracted from my work that I paid attention to how sick I was becoming.
I would find myself in a fog while driving, missing my turn-offs. I had to have others double-check my calculations, the numbers moved around the screen, and blurred out of focus. I was in the same dull static the weather was in. It was when my barking cough changed suddenly, that I became worried. On the damp morning I was admitted, I had finished my first cigarette of the morning. I let out a deep cough. It was tight in my chest, and my head was pounding. It felt like hornets were stinging down my throat and swarming around my brain. I gagged and choked as I coughed up dark brown and bloody phlegm from the bottom of my lungs. It felt like a piece of my chest was torn out with it as I looked at the mucus-covered lump of coal that came from my body.
I do not recall much after I walked into the ER that morning. It was white, sterile, with uncomfortable chairs. I waited in the room listening to the news all morning before they finally came for me. I had not noticed that my lips and fingertips turned a pale blue as my chest rattled more bloody chunks of phlegm to a wastebasket. A nurse in blue scrubs and a white facemask approached me. I saw her eyes overflow with terror as she saw the bloody mucus I was spitting into tissues and throwing away in the wastebasket near me. They had overlooked me for some time while I sat in the corner of the waiting room. I had zoned out watching a forgettable infomercial when they called me the first time. Several blood draws and a chest x-ray confirmed I had fungal pneumonia. My admitting doctor said I should have come earlier, but the damage is done.
Needles of fluids entered my arms, as wires attached to pads dotted my chest, and tubes ran into my nose and lungs. I felt drawn out and immobilized by fear and pain. The needles pinched and broke my veins as large bruises slowly flooded my arms. The tubes rubbed my skin raw as they were threaded through me. I had walked in there, and now I was bound to a bed unable to leave it. I felt my mind go dizzy with terror and exhaustion. It wanted me to run out of the powder blue room with thin cream curtains drawn around me, but my body was tethered to the bed and IV cart. I was comforted by being on the side with the window. I could see the passing of the day. The grey misty afternoon, gave way to thunderstorms in the evening. The gentle rolling thunder covered the beeping of machines working for my ailing body. The heavy rain soothed my head and gave me something else to focus on as I heard the curtains draw open.
The woman who pulled open my curtains was breathtaking. Her thick black hair was pulled back into a low curling ponytail. Her olive skin seemed to glow in the pale-yellow safety light above my bed. Her face was covered by a white mask, and her eyes were hauntingly beautiful. They looked like the moon reflected over the ocean on a peaceful night. They were turquoise swirling as she tried to smile with them. Her boney fingers grabbed the chart from the foot of my bed. She studied over it and looked back at the machines surrounding me. I thought I was looking at an angel of mercy, as she came closer. Her hands were icy cold as she ran them over my wrist. Her touch investigative and calculated as she watched my chest rise and fall unevenly. My eyes traveled up her arms to her white badge hanging off her blue scrub collar. Nora, MSN.
I saw her eyes shift from a forced smile to something darker. They danced wildly from the chart to my body. Her steely blue eyes boiled over violently to a putrid green. Her voice was like velvet against my ears as I heard her whisper, “Jackpot.”
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