Sunlight

The air was not so much stale as it was just there. It hung. Like the light above the dinner table that you need but keep hitting your head on every time you stand up. I guess that's how most hospitals are. The same stupid pastel tiles shape each room into the little Petri dishes they are. The same elementary school ceiling boards form cap to these human lab experiments. I had these horrible stomach aches as a young kid and I always found myself in the nurse's office. I'd lie on the couch in her back office (because that was her cure for everything - just go lie down for hours on end) and pass the hours by counting the thousands of little holes that dotted what I thought were Styrofoam squares. A thousand different insect eyeballs staring down at this chubby kid faking a stomach ache for ump-teenth time until it was time to go home. And here I am again, in this fucking hospital, not faking anything now, but watching everyone in some degree of death linger. Everyone loiters about, shuffle something, either paper or people, through the various stages of illness. Either you just got here and you're hurting or you've been here a while and you can't feel at all or you just left and you feel worse. The rooms stink of antiseptic; at least germs don't stink. Maybe that's rot.