The thing about hospitals

The steady beeping sound was unnerving.

It amazed Sarah, that it was still bothering her after all these time she had spent in various hospitals all across the US.

She knew, obviously, that steady beeping was a good thing, but all it did was remind her that there was always the chance of it stopping.

While she sat in the rather uncomfortable metal chair that was bolted to the wall in the hallway, she tried to think of the last time someone had flat-lined while she was there.

The sudden change in scenery that followed the seemingly so innocent and yet so fatal "beeeeeep" always hit her like a hurricane.

Nurses rushing towards the affected room, people yelling, loved ones gasping and crying, the latter always being the worst.

Sarah had gotten used to all the different looks on people´s faces when they realized that their husband, wife, friend, parent or god forbid their child, was about to stop existing in a conventional way.

There where people who just froze, stood there like they were made out of stone, afraid to move a muscle, as if afraid that one wrong move would send the other person over the edge. Then there were the loud ones, the hysterical ones, the ones that would scream and yell at the nurses and doctors to please just save whoever they deemed so important to them that they would completely lose it over their possible demise.

And then there were the silent criers, Sarah was one of them, she supposed. They just stood there with tears running down their faces, not sure if this cruel event was really happening.

Sarah tried to stop thinking about the beeping and what it meant and instead risked a glance at her watch. It was a quarter past 4. It already took 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to take. What was going on?

She tried to pass the time by looking at the people rushing by, trying to determine what kind of life they lived. Something her mother had always told her to do when they had been forced to wait somewhere.

There was a male nurse rushing by, clutching a clipboard to his chest, obviously in a hurry. He was probably nearing the end of his shift, ready to get back home to his girlfriend, where he would finally get something to eat, that wouldn´t even taste that good but at least it wouldn´t smell like cleaning supplies.

He disappeared into the room the beeping came out of and Sarah shifted her look to a woman in her mid-fifties that was sitting across from her, constantly checking her phone. She was probably waiting for someone to call, probably her adult daughter, so she could tell her, that her father had been admitted to the hospital.

That he wasn´t in life threatening danger, at least that would be what she was telling herself, and that the daughter should better come here quick, in case something about the father´s condition changed.

Sarah shook her head in a barely noticeable fashion: When had she stared playing this game in such a dark way? When she was a child, all the people had various pets at home they were hoping to get back to or where most likely on their way to ride a pony.

It was probably around the time she started spending times in hospitals.

Sarah leaned back, her eyes closing for a few seconds. When would this be over? "It´ll only take a second", she had said and Sarah had known that it was a lie but would´ve never guessed that it was actually going to take this long.

She was starting to doze off a little, the beeping sound now almost soothing in it´s steadiness, when suddenly a phone rang, loudly.

Sarah´s eyelids fluttered open and it was the lady right across from her who finally picked up her cell and said: "Laura, honey, it´s your Dad. He´s in the hospital again." She was already tearing up while listening to what Laura was saying, probably something along the lines of >How bad is it?<.

Sarah felt a little bit bad for eavesdropping like that, but then again where was she supposed to go and how was she supposed to stop listening to the conversation?

Covering her ears would´ve just been weird.

"They say it´s not that bad but honey, this time I don´t know. I think you should come to see him. They said they will let me in after they´re done examining him."

Tears where streaming down her cheeks now and Sarah felt bad and yet a little amazed at how right she had been about the woman.

You got the hang of it after a while here, she supposed.

"I love you, honey, see you soon", the woman said in a kind of strangled voice. Sarah couldn´t blame her. If she would´ve been forced to tell her daughter that her Dad was dying, she probably would´ve cried too.

Sarah realized that she had been staring and looked down at her hands. There had been a time when her fingers and nails had been manicured, always looking shiny and polished. Those times where long gone. Her nails were short, almost too short and her nail bed was torn, even a little bloody at the ring finger.

She sighed, not because she particularly missed those days but because it showed how little time she was able to spent on herself.

She was seemingly always thinking about someone else, always worrying about someone else, always trying to make someone else feel better, or at least a little better. When she looked back at her watch and was shocked to see that only four more minutes had passed since the last time she had looked. It felt like hours instead.

her eyes found the woman across from her one last time but she was looking down, once again frantically checking her phone.

Sarah had no clue who she was waiting on this time or if it was just a habit by now, but she wouldn´t find out because she decided to get up and walk around a little. It felt good, getting of off that metal chair.

She walked down the familiar hallway, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Sarah had learned that eye contact quickly evolved into a conversation that either included talking about someone about die and being forced to fake grieve or a story that included someone getting better and having to fake being happy.

Not that Sarah wasn´t able to empathize with other people´s feelings, but letting them get to you too much just wasn´t healthy, not in the frequency that she was confronted with them.

She ended up standing in front of the open door that led into the nurses staffroom but no one was in there right now. She sighed, now she wouldn´t even be able to ask someone when this was going to be over.

Sarah leaned against the wall, consulting her watch two more times. When no one showed up, she debated on whether to go back to that chair, at least she could sit down there. She had just pushed herself off of the wall when she heard it: The loud static beeping sound she had dreaded earlier. The sound of someone flat-lining.

She gazed into the general direction, which was back down the hall and she saw the woman that had called her daughter, get up and clutch a tissue to her face, then storming into the room that doctors and nurses were also rushing into.

Sarah had already lifted one leg to get over there, when someone grabbed her arm: "Sarah, sweetie, don´t. You´re shift is over, there´s enough people there and I already took up almost half an hour of your precious vacation time by making you wait for me. Doctor Harrison just never stops talking, does he? Anyways, let us go over the nursing records real quick and then you can leave for good. You already look so vacationy with your normal clothes on. I..."

Sarah nodded absently, not really listening to what her fellow nurse Larissa was saying, still rather occupied by what was going on behind closed doors down the hall. Here she was, waiting impatiently on her colleague, eager to leave for what her boyfriend called a "well-deserved" vacation, when there were people dying around here. It felt like a cosmic joke, like she should feel guilty for being done with her shift, for changing on time, for not going into over-time yet again and instead waiting on her co-worker who just wanted to talk to the "real cute new doctor" before he left.

"Sarah, are you listening to me?"

Larissas voice snapped her back into reality and she forced herself to smile and nod. It must´ve been a futile attempt because Larissa tilted her head just a little bit: "You´re an odd woman, you know that right? If I had a ten day vacation at the beach to get to, I would probably do a cartwheel. Or maybe not a cartwheel but at least I would be happy. Aren´t you happy?"

Sarah saw the woman who´s conversation she had overheard earlier step out of the room, obviously crying, pulling out her phone, probably to call Laura again, to tell her that her father had died, that it was too late for her to say goodbye to him.

"Yes, so happy", Sarah whispered.