#parkview

by P.B. Wells

Yep, just got out. a few days in the hospital, though it felt like a few decades of fluorescent purgatory. everyone still scratching their heads, trying to figure out what the hell happened.

No sane person wants to be in a hospital, and I like to think I hover somewhere between sane and the kind of crazy you can still hold a conversation with. but when the body starts doing tricks, shape-shifting, blood pressure pounding like artillery, visions crawling out of the wallpaper… you start thinking maybe it’s time to pay a little visit to the white-walled zoo.

Truth is, I’d been on one hell of a bender. a goddamn symphony of anger, self-pity, and that deep animal hatred for being stuck on this rock with the rest of you miserable bastards. the Admiral tried to steady the ship, Stella whispered her sweet lies, and some nameless, fruity bastard in a mason jar had all tried to play therapist. they all failed. my heart just about quit the job.

So there I was, hooked to machines, the kind that beep like bored robots, staring at ceilings that looked like the inside of a coffin. and then came the people.

Yeah, the people. the ones who float in and out, checking your vitals, scribbling numbers, stabbing you with needles like it’s an art form. they’re the only tether to the outside world, the last reminder that you’re not already a ghost.

But this time it was different. I’ve been to hospitals before, the kind where compassion is buried under paperwork and you feel like a decaying carcass waiting for disposal. not here. not this time. This time, I felt like I mattered. not a specimen. not a warning label. a person. imagine that.

Doctors, nurses, the cleaning crew, all of them busting their asses, a mosaic of accents and faces, patched together from every corner of whatever this world still has left. and for some stupid reason, they cared about a washed-up fool who drank too much and burned too hot.

Maybe Fate, if that bitch exists, lined them all up just for me. brought them from their corners of the map to this little hospital in the middle of nowhere, so that I wouldn’t die alone on a Tuesday.

Lacking proof otherwise, I'm gonna believe that. hell, I’ll toast to it.

So here’s to you, the staff of Parkview Whitley County Hospital. the sane ones in a world that’s lost its goddamn mind. May Fate, or whatever passes for it these days, always keep an eye on you and yours.

And may I never need you again. but if I do, I hope you’re there, still fighting the good fight, still patching up idiots like me who try to outdo the Universe and lose.