Liese Ricketts

Waiting in the examining room of my hospital, I saw a bizarre juxtaposition of objects around me. Upon closer inspection, I saw the room was not sterile but grimy, the furniture, akimbo. The fluorescent lighting made everything slightly green, slightly cyan. The Cheery and the Clinical chafed against each other on the greyish walls. Words on posters deflected one’s gaze from biohazards and apparatuses. A colorful print depicted a far away scene, suggesting a beauty and serenity well out of reach. A hospital’s approach to sickness is akin to the government’s approach to conflict; they employ euphemisms and assurances as diversions, I thought. Doctors, like teachers, are the foot soldiers, neither of them Administrators of Very Big Business. My cell phone camera and its drawing app helped to fill the time and my mind in this bloodless hospitalscape.