These Four Walls

My Hospital- born and raised as a Nurse here

Legs, limbs, lungs, lives.  Cloth to foreheads, hands washing feet, pulses under fingertips.  Suffering and pain, young and old.  


I live in these walls and I hate them, and I love them.  


I hate this place because it reminds me of the impending end that awaits us all. Broken, bleeding, hurting, death.  The smell of suffering, the mess and sweat, the seeping of wounds, the toil of fractured bodies. 

But I love this place because of its reminder: we have all been fooled.  Our culture tells us that  pretty tree-lined streets and monstrous houses protect us from disease.  We think that having and being, doing and achieving makes us unbreakable, immune.  But we all check our status, our positions, our wealth at the door and don gowns.  

An army of the same.  Patients.  Souls attached to skin and bones.

It doesn't matter who you were.  IV's look the same in rich or poor arms.  Fear and pain recognizable on asian or caucasian faces.  And blood runs crimson in the veins of us all. 

We are human.  We suffer loss in this life, all of us: loss if cancer-free living, loss of loved ones, loss of bodies we thought we could control, loss of faculties, loss of the image of perfection we never had but thought we did.  

There is a leveling, a humbling, an authenticating that happens within these hospital walls. And I get to be the hands that hold these hands and eyes that see their true eyes: revealing souls.  No facades, no fancy clothes, no images or regimens to hide behind.  

True natures revealed, true character unveiled.  There is nowhere for this true reality to hide within these four hospital walls: we were made for more than this life.  Our bodies are fading but what lies underneath though usually invisible is made all the more visible through suffering.