The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 6

Adam stayed with me until the doctor arrived, then excused himself, promising to return in a day or two. From there, the rest of the afternoon was a whirlwind of sampling. Blood draws, urine collection, skin scrapings from the worst of my plaques. Baseline imaging of the liver. A full punch biopsy at the back of my left arm, the lidocaine leaving the whole area insensate for over an hour. They catalogued every part of me.

It was the beginning of my transformation from person into patient.

They were all very kind. I remember the radiology tech warning me that the contrast dye I was being injected with might make me feel like I’d wet myself, and to not worry, that almost nobody actually did. He was right; the medicine made my skin flush, and my thighs felt hot and wet. But I came out of the CT machine dry as a bone.

Kindness, though, can’t fully outweigh the dehumanization of being poked and prodded on an unpredictable schedule. I tried to read, but I’d be interrupted before I finished a page. I’d sit and wait, attentively, and nobody would arrive to retrieve me for half an hour. A more flexible person than I am might have been just fine with that; put the book down when you have to, pick it back up later, and just roll along, easy as you please. But for me, it was its own form of torture. I bucked and fought against it, wanting to be left alone, wanting to be back in my apartment.

Not an option, I reminded myself.

Besides, what was I really missing about it? Not the dirty dishes that had been eternally piled in my sink, eventually thrown out wholesale when I had to pack the place up. Not the secondhand couch that was permanently molded into the shape of my ass. The little trinkets from a childhood I felt irreparably estranged from? The scraps of projects, crafts attempted and abandoned as my functioning got worse and worse?

My condition had all but swallowed up my past already. It happened slow at first, but by the time I reached Graceview, there was so little left. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Meg who tried and failed to knit socks, who had friends, who had goals and dreams and hopes. And then her face grew red and chapped, and she started canceling on plans. Canker sores stole the pleasure of food from her. Fatigue made everything but work pointless.

How had it gotten this far? Inch by slow, imperceptible inch.

Graceview was all I had left.

Dinner almost didn’t happen, but at shift change, Penelope and her replacement realized I hadn’t eaten yet. The cafeteria was closing and they wanted to make sure I got something substantial in me, so they grabbed a sandwich from the nurses’ station. I don’t remember what it was—something simple, ham and cheese maybe, with a little packet of yellow mustard on the side—but I remember it being a relief. Not because I was hungry (I wasn’t, too anxious to be hungry), but because it wasn’t exactly hospital food. No tray, no Jell-O cup, just cling wrap and white bread.

They finished up with me sometime after sunset, maybe nine, nine-thirty. Penelope’s replacement (I think it was Louise that time, but it all blurs together) flushed my saline lock, but didn’t hook me up to anything. “Tomorrow,” she told me, “bright and early.” It was almost certainly Louise; I’ve gotten to know her well. She’s older, experienced and worn into a particular groove. Not warm or cuddly, but she knows what to fuss over and what to let go. So it must have been her, because only she would’ve said, “You should go stretch your legs.”

Seven West had two lounges. One for families, one just for patients. Both were inhabited that evening. Veronica’s parents had posted up in the family lounge, and I didn’t want to talk to them; I could imagine the questions, the sympathy, the awkwardness as we both wanted something out of the other that wasn’t on offer. The patient lounge—smaller, but with nicer chairs, recliners that would work well with an IV drip—held an elderly man in a face mask, watching the news.

So I went wandering.

I’d put my leggings and socks and shoes back on, but I had left the gown in place and ditched the robe. My bracelet bumped against the prominence of my wrist. Visiting hours were over; I made it obvious that I still belonged. The nurses’ station on our ward was quiet now, the lights a little lower. The woman at the desk buzzed me out, probably warned by Louise that I’d be up and about.

I didn’t linger, but for a brief moment, I thought of turning around, going to Veronica’s room instead. Maybe …

But what else could she give me?

I caught the elevator and headed down, away from the comparative opulence of Seven West and into the aging body of the hospital at large.

With the lights dimmed for the evening, Graceview’s benign neglect was less evident, but not invisible. I stepped out into the public lobby, onto worn carpet of a busy-enough pattern to disguise the odd stain. The wall paint was high gloss, the better to wipe down, and it looked patchy in the less consistent lighting. The windows fronting the gift shop were rimmed in sealant that was breaking apart, the glass itself growing foggy at the edges and bottom, away from where the eye was drawn to by the stacks of stuffed animals, bouquets of shiny balloons.

Without the chatter of visitors and in a long, sleepy lull between overhead announcements, I could hear a low mechanical hum. It tickled my eardrums, made my skin pebble into gooseflesh. I shook myself into motion again, the better to ignore it.

The streetlamps outside were too short to illuminate the stained glass at the top of the atrium windows. The sheets of darkened glass were illegible, hanging overhead like storm clouds. Vultures. Something poorly balanced, threatening. I kept walking, into the hall that connected this older lobby with a newer addition that squatted at the base of the east tower.

And in between the towers: a garden, manicured and gently lit, seemingly entirely out of place.

I guess I wasn’t thinking, when I tried to go out to it.

“Ma’am?”

A security officer jogged over. I hadn’t even noticed him lurking by the bend in the hallway. I stopped, deer in the headlights, then looked down at the band around my wrist. CULPEPPER, MARGARET , my date of birth, my identification number.

I wanted to rip it off, but that would still have left my hospital gown, my saline lock. I would’ve been marked, just not named. I’d wanted it that way, I reminded myself.

It felt worse than I’d expected to be put to the test.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. No, I shouldn’t mumble, not even with my mouth feeling sorer than it had this morning. I looked up and smiled, reminding myself how to feign reasonable health. “Sorry, I guess it’s closed this late at night.” But the door wasn’t locked; I’d felt it give against my hand.

His look told me it was closed generally to the inhabitants of Graceview. The ones who didn’t get to clock out of their shifts, anyway. “Can I call you an escort?”

“Thank you, no,” I said, and wondered how many dementia patients had said the exact same thing. “My nurse knows where I am,” I added, and gave him my room number for good measure.

He wasn’t convinced. I could tell by the way his gaze flicked to the raw patches of my skin, the shadows beneath my eyes. But I didn’t have that IV pole with me, and I didn’t have blood or pus oozing from my nostrils. Nothing shockingly wrong with me. “Of course,” he said, and wandered a little ways away. He never fully took his eyes off me, but I tried to pretend he had as I listened to him mutter into his radio, no doubt double-checking with Louise.

He didn’t follow me when I headed for the east tower lobby. No footsteps trailed me around the bends in the hallway, past darkened and shuttered outpatient waiting areas. I wasn’t being chased. I scrubbed at my face with my hands; at least the quiet hum wasn’t as audible in this part of the building. And it was made not for patients, but for people passing through. Less medicinal, more institutional. Photos of old medical directors and board members on the walls.

It was better than being on the ward, even if it was still impersonal, still institutional. The different flavor was refreshing. I soaked it in and considered where I’d go next. No gardens, no coffee shop, but I wasn’t ready to go back, not yet. I drifted over to the directory, scanning the list of services in the east tower, looking for one that might have a little nook of cushioned benches out of the way.

I’d landed on trying the third-floor outpatient nutrition services office when my stomach cramped violently. (That’s the sort of irony that stays with you, even through what happened later. Nutrition services. ) I knew that cramping intimately, as well as the heated flush that followed it. I didn’t need to hear or feel the warning gurgle to know what was about to happen.

Luckily, they don’t lock the visitor bathrooms at night.

After, I sat down heavily on one of the padded benches, closing my eyes and waiting for the room to stop spinning. I was red-faced and shaking, and my legs felt like they were halfway rendered to gelatin. Stress always did bring on the worst GI episodes, so I probably should’ve expected this. Should have stayed in my room.

Frustrated tears welled up in my eyes, but I focused on my breathing. In and out. In and out. My mouth hurt; there were two canker sores, both on the right side, one along my gums and the other in my throat. The skin beneath the adhesive securing my saline lock was starting to itch. I could feel it swelling. In the stop-and-start activity of the day, I’d been able to shove most of the sensations to the background, a tugging that never stopped and occasionally increased in intensity, but now it was everything. My body ached, and my intestines gave a gentle half roil, nothing urgent but nothing benign, either.

“Should I call someone?”

I opened my eyes, expecting the security officer again. Instead, an older man with an environmental services badge was looking at me skeptically from across his cart.

I waved him off. “I’m fine,” I said.

He snorted. He had to be in at least his late sixties, with thinning hair and creased and wrinkled skin that, despite its roughness, didn’t look like it had seen much sun. He was pale all over, and his gaze was sharp. Calculating.

There was no point in staying out, I realized then. I wasn’t fine—and the hospital after hours wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to lose myself in the movement of the building, not be picked out again and again as somebody in distress.

I stood up, fussing with my wristband as if it were a too-heavy bangle. The smile on my face was practiced, but the practice showed through, or maybe just my exhaustion.

“Where are you headed?” the custodian asked.

“West tower,” I said, and my heart sank, remembering the twists and turns in the connecting hall, the way all the labs and waiting lounges and cafeteria offshoots were tucked in and around, making the place seem cozy and private, and adding way too much distance between point A and point B. “Seventh floor.”

He worked his jaw for a moment in thought, then motioned to the elevator with his chin. “Come on.”

It was an east tower elevator; I assumed he meant to take me to the skybridge. I hadn’t noticed what floor it was on, but it was smart enough.

“Secret shortcut,” he said. “It’ll shave at least half the distance off. Promise.” He pushed his cart over, then slapped the DOWN arrow.

I frowned, but when the elevator arrived, I only hesitated a moment before stepping into the car with him. He hit the button labeled LL . No badge, no code; the doors slid shut, and we dropped down one floor. Simple.

“What’s down here?” I asked. The answer was obvious the moment the doors opened again: the same slowly aging carpet and wall paint, but with a decidedly administrative air, and several signs pointing to various offices. I don’t know what I expected. The morgue, maybe? Steam tunnels? It was like I had wanted the man to be some cryptic groundskeeper, hinting at ominous secrets. But he was just an employee, like the security guard, like my nurses.

“Extra space,” he said, leading me down a much more straightforward hallway. There were arrows indicating where the west tower elevator bank was, and I thought I could see the shine of the metal.

“And it’s open to the public?”

“Not really,” he said. “But it’s not locked, either. People just don’t usually try going down. Doesn’t occur to them. They assume it’s off-limits, or they don’t notice it at all. But it’s useful for moving equipment, that sort of thing. Much quicker.” We reached the west tower elevators, and he hit the UP button for me. “Seventh floor, right? Long term, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Months,” I said. “Today’s just the first day.”

“You’ve got the right idea, exploring,” he said. “Poke around. Settle in. You’re going to live here, might as well get familiar. If there’s nothing keeping you out, try going in. At the very least, it’ll give you something to do.”

“Thank you,” I said, even though I couldn’t picture myself poking around the hospital on my own, and I didn’t think I’d be well enough to do so soon. I pictured Veronica and her locked room, but with me in the bed instead.

I did appreciate it, though.

The elevator car arrived, and I stepped in.

“Good luck,” the man said. “That floor tends to need it.”

And then the doors closed, and he was gone.