Early Symptoms

So! Out of season, but someone gave me something to read today and I got very, very inspired. For those of you who know the Otherverse, well... see if you can guess what this is!

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Everyone always says that hospitals are the worst. I never got that. 

Not that I like the damn things. But… well, it’s just a place. An accumulation of resources and things all brought together under one roof. People don’t hate hospitals, they hate feeling scared. They hate feeling alone, in an unfamiliar place. Most of all, they hate remembering that someday, they’re gonna die. Hospitals? They do all three at once. 

I admit, I might be… biased. I do spend a lot of time here. But it always struck me as odd that people think of hospitals and death. Sure, plenty of people die in them, but plenty of people die on a highway. Or at home. Or in planes, or in a park, or in the woods… hospitals have one thing that no other place you die in has. Hospitals have a chance you might get better.

Hit your head in the woods? Gone. Stabbed in the gooch in the city? Gone. Fall into a bunch of pitchforks on the farm? Gone. What’s the worst that happens in a hospital? You get injured somewhere three doors down from the closest thing that might fix you? 

So yeah. Hospitals? Never understood the bad rap.

Now the food? Yeah. They deserve that shit. Ain’t slander if it’s true. Somehow, they have jello that’s bad here. I’ve eaten enough soft foods to know.

Three cups a day keeps the doctor away. Which isn’t true, the doctor’s actually coming to check on me right now, but hey, you see how long it takes you to get bored and make up rhymes, stuck in a bed all day.

“And how are we doing today?” asks a bright young man in a cheerful, bored tone, as if we haven’t had this exact same interaction a half-dozen times already.

“I’m fine, doc,” I tell him. “No red piss, I can walk for a couple minutes at a time, and my chest only hurts a little. Basically healed.”

He laughs, as if it’s funny. I’ve gotten very good at humor that people think is funny, but that I find unbelievably dull. Such are the sacrifices one makes to be social in a place like this. Easier to not be remembered.

“I see from your charts,” he says, his nametag bright with the word “Chris” on it (Dr. Chris, I mean can you imagine?) “that we’re looking a bit improved today. Nurse, can you get me the-”

And just like that, I’m gone. Another face in the crowd, another name on the list. Hello, how are ya, ignore the response, talk to the nurse. Tried and true formula, works every time.

That’s the thing about a frequent flyer list. There’s interesting cases, and boring ones. Chronic pain isn’t interesting. They can’t fix it, I can’t fix it, it’ll get worse until I die, and they have better shit to be doing, so after the third visit my insurance barely covers and my family struggles to help with… why bother?

Yeah. For all the defense of this place I put up, I did tell you that I don’t like hospitals.

See, that’s the flipside of a medical care institution. The part that does evoke the thoughts of pain and death. Sure, you can die anywhere, and anyplace can hurt, and a hospital is one of the “anywhere’s” where you might get better. But… if you’re not going to get better here, then maybe you’re not going to get better.

And I’m not going to get better. Not with the shit they got here. Pain management, canes, and recommendations for physical therapists I can’t afford. I can barely afford the ambulance ride here, and it’s just about bankrupted my family (believe you me, I have gotten masterful at countering claims and challenging invoices).

I don’t hate hospitals. I know what they are. It just so happens that, for me, they’re not really a place of healing. I can recognize that they are that, for others… but sure. I’m a little bitter about it.

But hey, no one likes a complaining cripple, so I put on a smile as the doctor prattles on and the nurse pats me politely and changes my IV drip and walks off to do something else.

And I get out of bed.

“Recommend bedrest,” they say, “minimum exercise a day,” they say, “be careful when you move around,” they say; like I don’t already know. Honestly. What I wouldn’t give to hear a doctor tell me to go suck some cock and try heroin before I die. At least the novelty would be nice.

But hospitals aren’t all bad. I remember that more and more, whenever I can, and it’s easier to think about when I visit Mr. Ozlo.

I’m not sure where he’s from, not even sure if he knows where he’s from. He’s a cranky old shithead, and as I walk into the hospice care unit, the smell of old and sick and unbathed hits even past the alcohol and bleach, but… well. It’s something to do.

And I don’t think he has anyone else.

My visits aren’t usually frequent, but… it’s been a rough few months. One patch of black ice and I got proper fucked up about three months ago, and a stumble due to someone’s methhead chihuahua last week, both got me back here at St… something or other’s, and in that time, I don’t think anyone visited him. I asked the nurses, but they didn’t know. I think, like, half of them didn’t even know he was still here. A sad, wrinkled little man, skin full of sunspots and creases, pressed into hard lines of distaste for everything around him, in the very back of a very back room, with a tv that blares static as much as audio when it deigns to make sound, all alone in the world.

And it’s not like I have anything better to do.

I carefully, calmly, and slowly collapse myself into the seat next to his bed, ignoring how fucking uncomfortable a patient gown is on bare ass and leaning on my IV stand for support. It takes him a while to notice me, staring out as he is at the far wall where a spot of long-dead mold has left an interesting pattern, but putting an extra serving of applesauce on the little table over his bed wakes him up a bit.

“Oh,” he rasps, his voice like old parchment paper. “It’s you again.”

“Yup. Just me, oldie.”

“And your hair is even worse this time.”

I show off a neat little bob cut dyed a bright purple by flicking it idly. “Oh this? Just a little fashion adventure. After your time, I know. Hard to imagine many adventures when you all had to huddle around the fire in those old caves. Or did you have that yet as a kid? Fire?”

He laughs, though it sounds like a wheeze. Most of the amusement is in the set of his face; I don’t think he has a very easy time breathing anymore.

“Fuck you too, kid,” he grumbles past a silent chuckle.

“Applesauce again? Always giving me the soft shit.”

“Yeah, well, when you find some teeth, I can bring you bacon.”

He smiles, slow and unsteady, as he lifts up the cup, hands shaking. “I remember bacon. Sizzle. Nice and crisp, bright and early.”

“Nothin like it,” I nod. “Good old fashioned turkey bacon, fresh off the bird…”

He waves his hand at me, irritatedly. “Ah! None of that hipster shit. Gotta have real bacon. Juiced off a pig’s ass, proper-like.”

“Ah, I see. Just ain’t the same without the ripe taste of hog-ass, eh?”

“Damn right,” he chuckles.

When I see him just holding the cup, a little awkwardly, I reach over and pluck it. He pretends to protest, but we’ve done this dance before, and I open it for him and put the spoon in before crinkling my nose.

“Damn. Forgot I’m watching my weight. Gotta look good for all the pretty boys out there.”

“Fag,” he grumbles as he spoons applesauce shakily.

“Decrepit oldie,” I reply even-naturedly. I don’t think he can tell if I’m “really” a boy, so he kind of just went for homophobic just to be on the safe side. It would be funnier if I was a guy. As it is, I’m just light-titted and punk rock.

The TV takes that moment to flicker, and the hiss of static pops back in for a moment. I hiss at it like a cat, trying for a laugh from the old bastard, and reach to his remote to turn it off.

Something in him seems to relax at that, and he blinks, looking around as if confused. 

“What was that?” he asks.

“Just turning off the tv,” I answer. “You do know about those, yeah? Or was it all theater plays back in your day?”

He doesn’t riposte like I expected him to. Instead he just sort of sits there, applesauce half-eaten and partially on his chin, staring at the dead mold.

I wait a while. Sometimes he blanks. Old people shit. But he sits there, unmoving, for long enough that I get worried.

“Mr Ozlo?” I ask. When he doesn’t respond, I wave a hand in front of him, ignoring how it makes my shoulder and elbow ache. “Oldie? You still there?”

There’s a moment where I’m terrified, where I assume the worst and go to call a nurse- but before I can move, his hand has shot out and grabbed my wrist, hard. Harder than I thought he could grip anything.

He looks at me, and for a moment, past the cataracts, his eyes are clear and awake.

“I’m going to die here,” he whispers.

It’s the clearest thing I’ve ever heard him say.

I stay silent a while, not sure what to say, and then his grip tightens again, harder, until I can feel something in my wrist starting to strain against the joint-

“I’m going to die here,” he whispers, harsher this time. “They’re going to take me. And they’re going to hurt me. And I’m going to die here.”

I shake my head, my hand coming up to try and weaken his grasp on my wrist, but he pulls me closer, his eyes as close to mine as they’ve ever been. He smells of apple sauce and sick, of old and rotting teeth and old and rotting flesh and loneliness and poorly made, shitty applesauce and-

“They’re going to take me away. And I’ll die here.”

And then he lets go, just as I’m about to call for help. He sinks back into the bed like a wraith, like a slowly drying insect curling in on itself. The applesauce has spilled on his shirt, and he stares up at the ceiling, like I’ve disappeared.

I pant a bit, massaging my wrist, careful not to press down in ways that will add to the pain even more… but I don’t leave.

He has no one else. And it already hurts anyways.

It takes him almost thirty minutes to look back at me. I spend half that time on my phone, and the other half trying to make sure my incoming bruises don’t incapacitate my whole hand.

“You’re a good kid,” he mumbles, and I look up at him in surprise to hear him speak again. “You’re… I never got to say. Nobody come to visit me. Come to say goodbye. None of the nurses talk to me. Just you.”

He’s crying, but it’s difficult to see the tears past how his skin wrinkles, how dark this little corner of the room is, how little lighting reaches here past the privacy curtain.

“You’re a good kid,” he rasps. “Decent. Don’t let em take you. Don’t you die here. Go die somewhere with someone pretty, where the sun comes up sometimes.”

He turns to stare at the wall across from him. At the empty cot there, with no one in it, and the old, long-stained mold markings on the wall.

“I miss bacon,” he whispers.

The tv flickers and hisses out a fuzzy noise, and I turn to look up at it. I didn’t turn it on. I didn’t touch the remote.

When I look back down, something in Mr Ozlo’s eyes has gone quiet. He doesn’t say anything else.

And the remote is missing.

I just put it down. Right there on the end-table next to me. I look around, but…

The tv hisses static and distorted, grainy images of some old show I don’t recognize. And Mr Ozlo stares at the wall.

I sigh. Clean up his spilled applesauce as best I can.

“I’ll see what I can do, gramps,” I whisper to him. I don’t know this man, this stranger, well enough to love him, but… I squeeze his hand, once, and wait for him to squeeze back for a few minutes before I turn to head out.

And then I pause.

And turn to look at the wall that he’s staring at.

I… I don’t think the mold had that pattern before. 

I was looking at it. It looked vaguely like a star, or a couple of blotches. Basic stuff. Real moldcore kinda shit.

Now it… it looks the same. I mean, technically it’s the same. Same number of blotches. Same number of discolorations, same shapes, same patterns.

But for some reason, they look… different. Like they mean something now.

I take a deep, long breath. I shake my head a bit.

“Get it together, Sam,” I whisper to myself. 

I walk off towards the cafeteria, and pretend that the mold on the wall didn’t remind me of a weirdly angled hand, reaching out of the wall.