Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Nashville. I’m here to visit a friend. She’s in Neurosurgery ICU.
Vandy is busy today. Cars everywhere. Traffic is insane. People in scrubs linger outside monstrous buildings, playing on phones. Doctors and medical staffers wander to and fro. People stand outside the towers, having emotional conversations on cellphones.
There are folks from all walks of life here. I see a young woman using a wheelchair, heading toward the hospital entrance. She is carrying a huge stack of comic books in her lap. Superman comics.
“That’s a lot of comic books,” I say.
“Yeah, they’re for my sister. She loves Superman.”
“Not many girls like Superman.”
“Who lied to you?” she says. “All girls like Superman.”
Together, we go into the main doors of the Cancer Research Building. It’s a revolving door. I hate revolving doors.
Centuries ago, I believe the inventor of the revolving door looked at an ordinary door and said, “What if I took a normal door and added severe anxiety to it?”
Soon, the young woman and I are walking through a long
corridor toward the Critical Care Tower. The walls are earth tones. The air smells like disinfectant and plastic.
The woman in the wheelchair tells me that her sister has a very serious injury. I tell her I’m sorry. The young woman tells me she believes God is bigger than injuries.
We move past people aplenty. We see down-and-outers. We see people caught within the purgatory that is the Modern Medical Waiting Room. We wander past medical personnel, weatherworn physicians, and nurses who just look tired.
We see visitors hurriedly heading for the front door to light a cigarette. We pass a man in a clerical collar. We see families who look like they’ve been crying.
We make it to the elevators.
The young woman with the comic books says, “I’ve been basically living at this hospital for two weeks.”
I…