Hospital histories
Published: 09 December 2017Published: 09 December 2017
We never quite know what goes on behind closed doors. Hospitals are incubators for the most vital and vivid of human interactions. Much of these are secret and enclosed, sealed against the outside world. We are stripped down, as patients, wheeled on a trolley for surgery, our flawed and faulty bodies all we are left with. We become reliant on others to fulfil our basic bodily functions. Often dependant and frightened, patients are ministered to by staff, who also come with their own needs, anxieties, and dysfunctions. Walking along corridors, one notes the “quiet rooms”, fitted with pastel wall coverings and furnished with cushioned chairs and generous amounts of tissues. One keeps one's eyes down, keen not to disturb the privacy of fellow humans whose attire is falling off, whose faces expose their pain or distress. Everyone is busy: no one with a staff badge aimlessly meanders down corridors. People talk urgently on phones, staff and visitors alike. Communal space, like a coffee shop, is still charged with the stuff of life and death, populated with anxious families, couples facing new realities, staff talking quickly in a corner, waitresses witnessing it all. The steady thrum of the heating, the regular, irregular, symphony of beeping monitors, the smell of disinfectant. Hospitals often function as theatres, and natural propagators for stories. No wonder the multiple soap operas set in hospital wards, or the novels and poetry about what happens in and around them./.../
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