A Letter to Hospitals

Dear Hospitals,

I am writing to inquire as to whether you are intentionally uncomfortable or not.  I only ask because upon visiting a hospital today, I realized that hospitals make me nervous.  Number one, because my dad and I got lost because the hallways are inconceivably complicated.  For no good reason.  Number two, because it's a hospital.

Being in Resurrection Hospital in the same season that marks the birth of Jesus made me giggle internally, and then I remembered that that was probably offensive, and I laughed a little more.  All in my head.  This was only because I noticed the Jesus statue near the entrance of the hospital.  And the chapel.  And the prayer room.  I had no idea that there were so many places for religion to live in a hospital.

That brings me to my other concern.  Hospitals generally hold people who are ill.  Sick.  And sometimes on their deathbeds.  That's what you think of when you think of a hospital, right?  The dead and slowly dying.  But it occurred to me while we were wandering the hallways today that people are born in hospitals as well.  A place where death and life mingle, get together and have lunch, is bound to make someone nervous.  Especially the superstitious, which I am not.  Not too much.  Just thinking about a nurse tending to a newborn baby and then going to aid someone who's dying...is a strange thought.  Although I realize that there are different nurses for different departments (or whatever they're called in hospitals), the same idea holds.  Just a little unnerving.

The rows of closed doors.  The wheezing.  The groans.  The people rushing from place to place with purpose.  I swear my dad and I were the only two people in the entire building who had no idea where we were going, wandering aimlessly as we tried to find the door.  The machinery.  Heart monitors, oxygen tanks, gurneys...

Hospitals, I would recommend adding some color to your decor.  The nameless paintings on your walls do not, in fact, add to the homeyness of your halls.  I promise that the pattern of your carpet does not make me feel like I could stay there forever.  And the white?  So sterile, and it makes me want to turn around and walk out immediately.

That is, if I can find the door.

Cheers,
Brianna
A Concerned Visitor