Visitor
Hospitals are such strange places to visit.
I can feel the fear forming inside me before even stepping foot through the door. Concrete, plaster, glass. Hard surfaces in every direction, almost as if to repel any attempts to seek solace within.
Nowhere soft.
Labyrinthine floors repeating, each layer containing lifetimes, but just one holds significance: my reason for visiting.
* * * * *
November 26, 2024: It was around 10am, which was early morning for me since my sleep schedule had been wrecked by a combination of consistent caffeine intake and insomnia, bred by anxiety and poor time management. My phone’s alarm was ringing.
I rolled over to hit “snooze” and noticed a text from a long-time friend, C.J. Even though the full message went beyond the preview limit, the first few somber lines were enough to rouse me from slumber.
My best friend since childhood, Wesley - someone I’ve known since I started forming memories - had a seizure that stopped his heart, depriving his brain of oxygen for an unknown period of time. He was rushed to the hospital overnight, and was being treated in an Intensive Care Unit.
In my drowsiness I had hoped that this was part of some bad dream, something to be shaken off in the motions of waking… but the words remained on the screen, eerily still, though rattling around my head.
I soon found myself getting dressed, layering for the budding winter cold, looking up directions to the hospital, double-checking that I had the correct one selected, trying to prepare myself for the unknown.
Me, Wesley, and C.J. in Tulsa, Oklahoma [October 2023]
* * * * *
Sprawling hallways and compact waiting rooms—some seemingly empty, others buzzing with activity. Where else can one so efficiently span the range of human emotion, see the spectrum ignited in such iridescence?
Joy, sadness, hope, fear. Life’s temporality on grand display, casting its shadow across the deep, lasting impressions these emotions carve in us.
“Someone out there has it worse.” In any hospital that saying is certainly vindicated. Though we do not go to hospitals looking for lessons in gratitude, nor to be lectured on the harsh realities of others’ lives.
If anything, understanding is even more difficult between those walls.
There is a shrinking that happens inside a hospital, of the mental map of our lives we each lay in front of ourselves. Plotting courses and planning routes, daily routines and weekly schemes, monthly arrangements and annual traditions—time and space folded in on itself, as if crumpled by some great hand.
Paths that were once open and inviting now appear invisible, overgrown with dread and sunk into the sameness. Options that are no longer viable litter the landscape of the mind, and though lifeless, hold our attention as we must pick up our feet to step over them.
Every choice is a commitment to a different life.
Every commitment is a sacrifice.
* * * * *
Not every visit to the hospital is the same. On July 31, 2024, my mom underwent open-heart surgery to repair a heart valve. The surgery went well, and she was released from the ICU after about a week. Despite being a very intense ordeal, I never really felt *afraid*.
The procedure had been consulted, scheduled, and prepared for. I assumed that she would not have been advised to have the surgery if the doctors thought she couldn’t handle it. Somehow, I knew that she would make it through okay. Maybe that was faith.
Wesley hadn’t had many seizures in his life; a minor one back in college, but never anything like what happened that night on November 25, 2024. Luckily, he had been with his fiancé Lilly at the time—someone I hadn’t even formally met at that point.
She and her mom (who is a nurse) saved his life by performing CPR on him for almost 15 minutes until the ambulance arrived. But when I finally saw him in the ICU the next morning—in a medically-induced coma, with a ventilation tube down his throat—it was different. Nobody was prepared for this.
Wesley and Lilly [October 2024]
* * * * *
Fear shuts down the brain, rendering us near incapable of thinking new thoughts, of creating new connections inside our mind. In the face of fear we fall back on old habits, outdated ideals, and outgrown emotional responses.
What was only once true becomes true forever; our minds made up before we even knew what our options were.
“No one’s an atheist on their deathbed.” Well there’s not much point in looking for an exit until it’s time to get off the road. How can we hold onto faith when its vessel is broken?
Words fall short and rarely remain intact. Nothing can be spoken into existence that isn’t already possible, but our scope can be narrowed so tightly that even an entire world appears merely a red-light.
It’s hard not to think about death when it could be around any corner. Fear is often just an assumption; then again, so is faith. Do we actually get to choose our own path? Or just the color of the rug that will be pulled out from under us?
* * * * *
On December 9, 2024, Wesley was transferred to a long-term care facility to continue his recovery. His heart and lungs have regained some strength, his body is stabilizing, but it remains uncertain to what level his mental capacities can be restored.
After having a tracheotomy to replace the ventilator tube, he still has yet to fully speak, but is working with some great physical therapists and making slow progression. His mom, Donna, has been updating us when we are unable to stay.
I was fortunate to see Wesley a couple weeks before this all happened, stopping by to eat at the restaurant where he worked at the time. We hugged, exchanged some jokes as he walked the floor, said we loved each other, and that we should hang out properly soon.
That was the last time I spoke with him in person.
It brings me joy that he is still alive.
It deeply saddens me that he (and his family) has to go through this.
I hope that we will be able to talk and laugh together again.
I am afraid that we will not be able to.
I often wonder if he is afraid, too.
Myself and Wesley (right) on a carnival ride [2007]
* * * * *
The world is a hospital and I am trying to find my friend.
I check in at the desk.
“I am looking for someone.” Aren’t we all? “I think they were moved into a different room since I was last here.”
“What’s their name?”
“Curtis, Wesley.” The receptionist gives me the room number, then asks me for my name.
“David.”
She quickly scrawls the word on a white name tag with a blue stripe at the top proclaiming VISITOR.
Yes, I am just a visitor.
