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Show 137 rated. It is beyond invigorated -1 am energized beyond an imagined Starbuck's best. Around and around the circle I go, creating my own weather - my hair is flying behind me in the breeze. I am constantly praying that no one is walking on the wrong side of the comers as I near them because I cannot slow down for any reason. I must push. I must keep pushing. Five pushes, and hold the inside wheel to slingshot around the comer. Seven pushes down the long hallway, and hold for the comer. Five, then seven, then five again. My breathing is coming in gasps, my muscles are aching from repetition of movement, but still I cannot stop. I change direction and begin the count anew. Again. And again. And yet again. At last I hold the wheel for the comer into the hallway to my room at the end and for the first time I can see the evidence of my being a patient there. Brightly colored hand-written signs garishly decorate the walls leading up to and on the outside of my door: "No beepers! No pagers! No sudden noise!" "Do Not Enter Without Permission From The Nurses' Station!" "Blood Draws - See Nurse First!" "QUIET!!!!" (Two of these - one in red and one in orange.) I sit in my chair in a stunned stillness. Even amid the other rare specimens in this teaching hospital, I have somehow managed to become the glaringly obvious. I am the freak of nature in the glass jar on the pathologist's shelf, preserved in stillness by my immobilizing disease. Well-labeled for all to read. Obeying the sign, I quietly enter my room, transfer into the bed and finally fall asleep. |
