Sadness
A place full of sadness, a place where nobody wants to spend their day. Death is a daily visitor. As one walks up to the front doors an stench of dead and the sick masked with air freshener fills the nostrils of anyone who dares to enter. At the front desk there is a stern face that helps new patients. At the information desk a women sits there with a blank face filling out the patient’s payment information. The room is large with chairs scattered around the endless amount of people inside. The room is a cold desolate area where those in need are forced to wait. There are bodies all over the place, on chairs, sitting on the floor, standing up, and in wheel chairs. A young mother sits on the floor holding her baby in her arms. At a quick glance no one would notice anything wrong but with a second look anyone can notice a river of blood is running down the side of her head, down her neck then finally to a shirt that has a growing patch of red on its surface.

The same room is cold in a desperate attempt to stop germs in their tracks. If one looks around they will meet the faces of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands and wives. The people are like those in a war there’s veterans and there’s the soldiers that are fresh from boot camp. The veterans sit there taking everything in not asking questions and they have a hard stern look on there face. Meanwhile those who are fresh from boot camp hide their faces from everyone else in embarrassment and shame and praying for everything to be okay. In the corner of the room a father sits on a small chair and holds his five year old daughter in his lap while she cry’s because of the unnatural bend of her arm that would make anyone wince in pain upon looking at it. It’s clear that there is a ball of worry in his gut and although that his eyes and ears seek an answer but it does not come. His whimpers are over shadowed by the roar of other cries and groans of pain from the others that seek the same answer as him

Time seems to be controlled by a slug. The days drag on in a sluggish matter as if the clocks in the room go slower then all the other clocks in the world. Patients come and go and with every patient that is treated one replaces it. For every broken bone that is splinted another comes ten minutes later and takes its place. It is like an ant colony, every time they build their ant hill a young child comes along to kick it making them start all over. For every 10 heart monitors that are placed on a patient another starts an infinite beep that acknowledges the nurse that yet another soul has drifted off into the world never to be seen by any other living soul. The visitor in the room shrieks and the sound of a stampede is heard from a distance in the hall rushing. Three nurses barge into the room giving one last desperate attempt to save the patient that lays motion less on the bed but no such miracle happens. As one feels like they have seen the worst injury’s the emergency door to the Intensive Care Unit opens up. At first one would see a group of well-muscled men carrying a stretcher like if the person in it was a king but then as they put the stretcher on a bed and as one takes a glance they turn their head in sorrow and because of the disgusting injuries. There in the stretcher lays a ruin of a man. Multiple parts of his body are as black as charcoal. The majority of his body is as red as fire. His burns are clearly life threatening, the proof of the fact fire is not a weapon to be played with is written all over his body. Another door crashes open and a team of nurses led by a doctor are running out to save yet another soul. As the nurses take one look their faces say it all “There’s no hope.” Then the doctor starts to shout orders like a drill sergeant and his attitude is so confident that all hope enters the room. The bed disappears in a cloud of nurses and paramedics.

As the sun lays down into the earth the light in the hospital is faint. For a moment the hospital seems to take a brief moment to notice that the world is still alive and that time is still ticking. Florescent lights are undimmed by an automatic timer. And as fast as lightning the whole building lights up in a white flash. At ten o’clock at night a fresh wave of troops comes to relieve the others from their posts. As stories of the day are exchanged and good byes are said nurses leave the building into the parking lot. As they enter their vehicles a helicopter is landing on the landing pad. The turning blades on the helicopter are going extremely fast creating wind that commences the leaves on the floor to attack everything in their way from every angle. Many sit in there auto mobiles to predict the patient’s injuries. Even leaving the building is depressing because there are always people coming. The whole building is three main buildings each five stories high and all are glowing in a white shield that fends off all the darkness of the world except for the occasional shady figure that slips threw to reap the souls of the dead. From a distance one building in particular stands out and the letters Emergency Room glow in a red so rich it’s like blood.