Happy Birthday, Here’s A Meal Ticket for the Hospital Cafeteria

There’s a two things you learn when you stay overnight for a few consecutive days at a hospital, waiting for test results for a loved one. One is that the passage of time is entirely subjective, a phenomenon noted when the circadian rhythm of one’s daily routine is smashed to bits. The other is that hospital employees on all levels get paid millions of dollars a year to ensure the impression that they are carting around screaming humanity and not screaming piles of middle-grade meat for open-air market sale.

It’s better when your stay is situated in an acclaimed children’s hospital—regrettably, a hospital for children, not run by children—but not too much better. Everything you’d come to expect from a building full of convalescent pre-adolescents is present but with a patina of swept corners and curvy modern architecture blocking the horror show. The pouty swell of sprained ankles and the exaggerated misery of inconvenienced relatives hovers on the edge of perception. It’s there if you just brush back the gossamer facade.

The good thing is that with all there’s some useful leisure time when you finish working your day job remotely, listening to a doctor’s helpful drone, assisting anxious spouses, wondering when you’ll get to see your other child soon, and catching up on back episodes of Bleach on Netflix. There’s time for thinking of writing and writing about thinking about it—the results of which you now have just consumed. Was this an ill-considered use of time or could this live on?

Somewhere a printout of an open-ended circle has been completed with a red crayon and is now already forgotten.