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This hospital used to be so familiar. The commutative disease still etched the cracks of the flakey wall paint; the central nervous system that grasped the visitors and incarcerated the permanent. The irony of the delicate facade and the welcoming decor went unnoticed by the frequent. They would gradually go unnoticed, as they each became another cheap painting placed in the lobby, a vase of surreal flowers, or the mundane dividing curtains separating the sick. Wallflowers, they all became wallflowers. Translucent to the others, and forgotten by themselves.

I was once one of them, a faux wood side chair to be exact. I was a permanent fixture in room 1295. I subliminally admitted myself, and became a patient of exasperation, and was inevitably administered hopelessness. I sat, sunrise to sunset, watching each drip of the IV as it proceeded to do its job of providing “comfort”. The repetition of that sound consumed the ears of the desperate bedside beings in every room of that floor. It was a constant we all relayed on. And, even after it was all over, it would still drip in your ears. That sound stays with you, it stays with us all. A subsequent reminder of our capitulation to a creation of nature.

Control, well, that was out of our control, and the disease had the driver’s seat. Everyone of us drove on the same highway, and got off the same exit, for the most part.

I spent an irretrievable amount of time here. Time spent dazed, and living a lie of posed complacency. She kept me together with the arbitrary whispers that were harmonized at the perfect time. She could feel the people that came and went everyday. She felt their deterioration, and she wouldn’t let me end up like that. Even now, after. She didn’t have an option, and she still lived a life of authentic complacency. I had a choice, but was blinded by the pre-conceived forlorn conclusion. There was only one highway, with one exit.

My favorite story about her is when I came by the hospital on a Sunday morning, ten a.m, like every Sunday, but this Sunday was different. When I walked in, I didn’t see her usual tea cup. There was a bottle of Jim Beam, no glass, just the bottle. She welcomed me as if drinking bourbon at ten a.m on a Sunday was normal for an 87 year old women. She had on the morning news, and watched with a glint of euphoria in her eyes. Not one sense of disappointment or regret could be discovered in any crevice of her deteriorating body. That was the day I realized that there was more than one exit on that highway, I just had always seemed to be looking out the wrong window.

This is my first time back here since that day. I got a call saying that a nurse found a photo album that she assumed belonged to her. The elevator smelled the same, and the same melting pot of noise engulfed my ears. When I got to the nurses station, the nurse handed me a moderately worn black leather photo album, one I didn’t recognize. I scanned through the pictures, all of them, treating each one like a autumn leaf that could crumble at the touch. Each photo was of a different location from all across the world. Not one photo contained a person. I thought about telling the nurse that it wasn’t hers, but then I reconsidered. She had 87 years to travel wherever she pleased. That’s the one thing the sickness hadn’t taken from her, her mind. All of the photos harbored opportunity, and I wouldn’t let them continue to reside in leather. I took the photo album in my arms and headed for the door. It was then, for the first time, when the sound of the IV wasn’t a metronome keeping me on pace. For the first time I lost track of that interminable sound.