My eyes slowly began to creep open and, the most visible thing in the room is the light pouring out of the bottom of the bathroom door. It must be at least midnight. The illumination helps make everything in the room more visible. I have spent so much time here already, it’s like home. Unfortunately, this is not the most enjoyable home to be living in.
The bed that I am forced to lay upon consists of a mattress that must be made from a slab of concrete, covered in a pure blue plastic coating that is incapable of letting my body heat be released, in return causing sweat. On either side, a railing makes it so I will not have the ability to fall of the bed at night, but it makes me feel like an ensnared animal, waiting for my day to be released. To the left of my bed is a retched machine, with three rectangular boxes hanging on a long metallic pole, and two bags of dripping fluid. Drip, drip, drip. The small droplets are transported from the plastic bag, into a tube, then into the agonizing IV in my left arm. Every moment of the day, I have fluids being involuntarily forced into my body.
All of the décor in the room makes me feel a false sense of happiness. The walls are painted a velvety purple tint, with a contrasting red to break up the intense purple color. Along the wall, drawings are hung that state inspirational things like “Next step, home” or “you can do it.” The floor is as cold as a frozen lake. Despite the fact that the small circles glow a florescent green color, the floors are a dangerous place to step barefoot. The touch of a single toe to this icy surface could cause an eruption of goose bumps to encompass the entire body.
On the right side of where I am laying, I can see a secluded, loving figure resting on a couch that is often described to be “the make-shift bed from h*ll.” There, my mother has been sleeping for days and days, watching, listening, and waiting. On the small table beside her, glasses, a half empty water bottle, and an open bag of unsalted pretzel sticks have made themselves a semi-permanent home. Her body is a constant reminder that I am not the only one suffering in this dreadful place.
Floating orbs of a shimmering material are a perpetual indication of the friends that have come and gone during my prison sentence. Some of these gifts say “get well soon,” while others are themed around Disney princesses and other girly things. Due to the flow of the air conditioning, these balloons often run into each other in the middle of the night, creating a crumbling noise like a crushed piece of paper. Though I am aware of their presence, the shadows still startle me in the night; they are almost human like.
Nurses hustle in and out, in and out, in and out. What is supposed to be every four hours, feels like every fifteen minutes in the dead of night. I feel as though I am stuck in a never ending vortex of medical staff. All of them have tattooed smiles that are forced onto their faces. Each has a different kind of shirt on with matching pants. Princesses, frogs, swirls, smiley faces, and dogs are just the beginning of the multitudes of scrubs that have walked into room 402. I know that they all care about their jobs and want to help, but I often want them to speak to me like I am a regular human being, not a test subject. The atmosphere they attempt to create when they check my vital signs feels as fake as the death of Paul McCartney.
The worst part of it all is staring me right in the face. The thin metal blinds don’t fool a person that is stuck in a bed all day. The only connection I have been given to the outside world, the real world, is a large window, taking up the larger portion of the wall on the right side of the room. I continuously peer out, watching cars zoom by, trying to remember the feeling of my own car. The hum of the engine and the smooth turn of my steering wheel. It all seems so distant in this place. A thin sheet of glass is blocking me from fresh air, people, and nature. The silence here is deafening. Looking through my portal reminds me of how much unnoticed noises, such as cars and people, mean to me. I would kill to hear the sound of a car running, as opposed to “time to check your vitals” and the beep, beep, beep of it all.
The days here seem long, yet short. The people here seem loving, yet fake. In this place, I have trouble deciphering the difference between reality and fantasy. Nightmares and fears are legitimate struggles and I am not sure who or what to believe anymore.