On the way to my classes I pass the hospital. There isn't any smoking allowed on the hospital ground, so all of the staff, patients and nurses (who you'd think would know better) cross the street and puff away on the corner of the university green. Walking through the cloud of smoke a couple of times a day isn't pleasant, but the people out there sucking their butts seem like "the type"-the one's who don't suprise you when they pull a gleaming pack out of their pocket. Sometimes walking by this group really bothers me - on a beautiful fall day, I want to watch the Norway Maples finally give into the change of colors, not having it interuppted by an aggravated hack or a crackling, burned voice on a cell phone.
Lately though, a man has started making a daily appearance at the smoking ring. He isn't a nurse or a doctor or any of that: he's a patient. He sits in his wheelchair, wearing the white and blue spotted gown under a tattered red plaid dressing robe. There is a drip bag hanging from the metal stem above his with a thin plastic tube tracing downwards into his emaciated, paper thin forearm. His eyes are hollow and sunken and his whispy white hair flutters it soft breezes. His thin, long hands shake as he slowly lifts the white cigarette to his dry lips. He doesn't seem to move as he inhales, he sits still, as if forcing the smoke to travel into his lungs by sheer willpower.
At first, the man was always alone, and always at the same time of day. His felt slippers would sometimes slip down his feet and cast an afternoon shadow on the cracked and work concrete. The eyes were always empty.
One day, women started to visit him. He wouldn't talk much to them, but they seemed to dote on him. As days wore on, the sicker he seemed to get, and the more people came to visit him.
I am waiting for the day that he won't be out there, that his usual spot by the bench would be vacant.
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4 comments:
You're a good writer, Mo.
imnotclever.
That's a really amazing entry. I wish I could write like that.
- C_E
sometimes I wonder how I'll die.
I contemplate a fall where gear zippers. I imagine an avalanche. I think of drowning, burning, car crashes, a heart attack, or being crushed to death. None of these seem all that bad, because you don't have to face it. It just happens. SNAP, that fast, except soundless.
sometimes I just hope I die in a place that's so remote that they can't retrieve my body. Sometimes I hope that if I had HIV or HCV or TB or something incurable that I just have someone to die WITH.
Sometimes I hope I die when a great song is playing. Sometimes I hope that it's at some ridiculously peaceful apex of a moment of life.
Maybe while writing a poem.
"what are clouds,
but an excuse for the sky?
what is life,
but an escape from death?"
Yes smoking is disgusting and it's certainly not allowed at any hospital etc I've worked at.
The last one in the U.K I worked for had their policy set so any smoker had to be across the road at least, on the side walk, no where near anyone entering/ exiting the building, which I was ultimately all for! Disgusting habit. As I'd say to anyone who puffs in my vicinity, damage your own lungs, not mine, thank you so much :)
I strongly resent anyone inflicting their ill/ unhealthy habit on me (who is otherwise fit and healthy).
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