• Chapter One •
New nurse tonight.
She’s about my age. Gentle. When Nurse Lauren did her shift change report, the new girl’s fingers twitched like she wanted to be taking notes, but she’d had no paper, no pencil. No tablet. Her gloves squeaked with the movement.
Margaret Culpepper is twenty-six years old, and was admitted to Graceview Memorial seven weeks ago for inpatient management of Fayette-Gehret syndrome under the SWAIL protocol. She had an infusion this morning, and another scheduled tomorrow.
Everybody still wears full PPE around me. Face shield, gloves, N95—the works. It wasn’t supposed to last this long, was it? I’m not sure what that means, except that it’s bad. Of course it’s bad.
Margaret, can you give your full name and date of birth?
I’m so tired of everything. I just want to go home. But—
Margaret initially tolerated treatment well, but has experienced several setbacks.
Setbacks. That’s a nice way of describing it.
This room isn’t as nice as the one I started out in. My body is more broken than it has ever been. The overhead PA is intermittent but loud, echoing day and night with codes, with messages, with requests I can’t always understand. I’m not sure what day it is anymore, or if the whiteboard across from my bed is still accurate. My eyes blur when I try to read the clock. When my brain cooperates, I can mark the march of days by the light through the window and the coming and going of my nurses.
When my brain doesn’t cooperate, I drift. Most of the time drifting is easier.
Four weeks ago, Margaret began exhibiting symptoms of tuberculosis. She is currently being treated with isoniazid INH in combination with rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol. She has been experiencing nausea, joint pain, and intermittent confusion and paranoia, as well as occasional seizures, currently understood to be caused by the interaction of her medications, the SWAIL infusions, and her underlying condition. We have been treating side effects as they emerge.
Report, twice a day, is one of my last anchors. Seven a.m., seven p.m., again and again and again. A litany of my suffering and my sins, a little different each time, but always sanitized and organized. Margaret Culpepper, burnt-out and burned down. They don’t mention my stolen phone, or the nightmares, or what happened to Isobel.
They never mention Isobel at all.
All medication is being administered via a port-a-cath placed ten days ago on her left side chest, replacing a previous port-a-cath that was removed due to self-inflicted trauma.
Ten days ago? I can’t remember …
Margaret, how is your pain right now?
I never know what number to tell them. Quantifying is something for the hospital to do; I only experience everything qualitatively. My gums are bleeding again. My breath rattles in my chest. My head swims, but I’ve lost track of if it hurts, or only wanders. My skin is pocked and blistering, and my stomach is the same; and yet they’ve both been worse many times before. I’m on the mend. I am being reorganized.
A six? That’s what’s circled on the board, so I must have said it. A six. Does this feel like a six? Did it earlier, however much earlier, when the new nurse first arrived?
(What’s her name again? That isn’t on the board. She forgot to update it. Maybe I was a six this morning, instead.)
She is voiding fine, but has not had a BM today.
I’m supposed to contribute, but it’s so much easier to let them discuss me as if I’m just an object. Mostly, I’ve stopped caring. But it always gets me, the quick aside about the waste I produce. That’s quantified, too. They need to make sure I’m giving as much as I’m taking in.
They go through a recitation of letters and numbers: my CBC, CMP, ESR, CRP. Once, I tried to sort out what it all meant. But that knowledge can’t help me now, if it ever could.
My windows are dark, but the clock says …
No, I can’t see that far today. But maybe it’s still early. Ten?
Margaret is on a mechanical soft diet due to oral discomfort. Meals have been preselected and will be delivered at 2030. She is often able to feed herself, but please assess when dropping off her tray.
Dinner was mashed potatoes and chicken stewed until it was slime. I can still taste it. It can’t be that late.
And bedside report still rings in my ears, infiltrating, reminding me of where I am. Who I am. How they see me.
She is a high fall risk, see her yellow wristband. Her bed alarm is on at all hours. She generally uses her call light appropriately and gets up well with an assist, but should not be left unattended in the bathroom. Although Margaret isn’t currently requiring one-to-one supervision, she is considered a high elopement risk and remains on a medical hold. Notify Charge immediately if soft restraints become necessary at any point, and ensure you have a physician order within fifteen minutes.
But neither Margaret nor I anticipate that being necessary; we’ve had a run of good days, haven’t we?
Haven’t we?
• Chapter Two •
My first hospital room had a perfect view of the mountains.
It was high up in the west tower, and was designed for comfort almost as much as for clinical expediency. Nothing excessive, no velvet curtains or soft mood lighting, but everything was gleamingly new, and the bed was actually soft. The linens were fresh, not laundered a thousand times. The pillows hadn’t collapsed under the weight of so many other patients.
“A bit of VIP treatment!” chirped the aide who was getting me settled. “They even sprang for nicer showerheads when they remodeled this floor.”
I didn’t expect any VIP treatment. I wasn’t sure I wanted it, either. It was—ambitious. Too confident. It said, We know we can fix you, and I knew that was a lie.
But I must have been hopeful, back then. I can almost remember it. A small mercy: that the memory is fading, blurring into the indistinct ebb and flow of pain. I don’t think I could handle the agony of having that hope dashed. Better to lose it when I’m not looking.
I sat on the very edge of the bed, unsure of where to look, what to do. I’d brought a suitcase, but it was small. I wouldn’t be wearing much besides hospital gowns for the next couple months, and all my books were on my phone. I must have read over a hundred What to Pack When You’re Admitted lists, most of them geared toward expectant parents, and I’d dutifully packed what showed up again and again: a nice pillow, comfortable slippers, an eye mask, earplugs, a bathrobe. A little Bluetooth speaker. Pads, which I had to buy special, since my progesterone-only birth control had to be discontinued as part of the trial. While on it, I rarely bled. Without it, all bets would be off. I’d almost bought myself some hospital-cooperative pajamas, but I’d already run out of my meager budget on everything else.
And now I didn’t need most of it. The pillow looked great. There were already slippers right next to the bed. I wasn’t going to have a roommate, and I hated eye masks.
The aide set a bundle of fabric down next to me. “No rush, but you can get changed when you’re ready,” she said. “I’m going to let your nurse know you’re here, and she’ll be by to place your IV. Sound good?”
I nodded.
“Do you want a soda or juice while you’re waiting?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
Her smile was mechanical but genuine as she left the room.
I wasn’t okay, of course. I was in a hospital. This wasn’t labor and delivery. But there was that pesky hope thing again—I was here to be cured, wasn’t I? Maybe this was going to be the happiest day of my life, if only in hindsight.
Copyright © 2025 by Caitlin Starling
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