Theme Week 4
Theme Week 4.
Take I
In March of 2004, my husband was in the hospital for a cardiac catheterization , after having a heart attack. (at the ripe old age of 55) Family members of patients are issued beepers so that they can be notified of the status of the procedures being done. Since I do not sit still well, and the weather was miserable, I decided to take a walk to the Riverside Inn, which is connected to EMMC by a series of dreary corridors, in essentially the basement of the hospital. The hospital was built in the 1890s, and the original portion is still there, where nurses used to receive their training. Since I was running on caffeine and nerves at the time, my imagination was a bit overactive. I did walk all the way to the hotel and back. I told myself that it wouldn’t be so bad in the daylight, and then I realized that there are no windows, so there would never be any daylight. It helped to pass the time, and kept me busy until Hubby was out of surgery and I could see him.
Take II
Have you ever walked from EMMC to the Riverside Inn through the underground maze? I have. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had my Cardiac Cath Lab issued beeper, Hubby was safely ensconced in the cath lab, surrounded by knowledgeable professionals, who were going to fix him up good as new (good as 40 anyway) , and the tv in the cardiac waiting room was driving me crazy…not to mention the morons waiting there. O.K. I should be charitable. Maybe they were as nervous as I was and their way of handling it was to be loud and obnoxious. At any rate, I needed to walk and since it was one of those crummy, slushy, days that we only seem to get in March, I figured I’d follow the arrows on the floor to the Inn. Kind of like my own Yellow Brick Road.
Things started out pretty well, but the further I went, and the more corners I turned, the creepier it got. I saw no one. I started talking to myself (only in my head… I figured whistling a happy tune might get me locked away somewhere) But every corner brought a new shadow, or the hiss and rattle of old pipes. Visions of the ghosts of nurses past and shrouded bodies from the morgue were in the back of my mind. In spite of wanting to just turn back, I was determined to give myself this little test of endurance, however silly, and go on to the end. Door signs indicated various labs, nuclear medicine, inhalation therapy, caution..oxygen, prosthetics, boiler room….always a scary place in the movies, and none the less so in my head at that moment. The writing on the floor told me that the Inn was just ahead, and at long last I came to the stairs which led up into the lobby. Once there, it looked like any number of hotels I’ve stayed in; A bit of an anticlimax after the walk there. I wandered around the room for a bit and headed back down the stairs, to the hospital. It was no less eerie going back, but I knew that I could do it without making a scene and totally embarrassing myself. It seems a bit juvenile now, but at that moment, it was a small victory that I needed for myself. Sometimes small victories are the ones that matter.
Take III
Have you ever walked from EMMC to the Riverside Inn through the underground maze? I have. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had my Cardiac Cath Lab issued beeper, Hubby was safely ensconced in the cath lab, surrounded by knowledgeable professionals, who were going to fix him up good as new (good as 40 anyway) , and the tv in the cardiac waiting room was driving me crazy…not to mention the morons waiting there. O.K. I should be charitable. Maybe they were as nervous as I was and their way of handling it was to be loud and obnoxious while listening to their soap operas and talking on their cell phones. At any rate, I needed to walk and since it was one of those crummy, slushy, days that we only seem to get in March, I figured I’d follow the arrows on the floor to the Inn. Kind of like my own Yellow Brick Road.
Things started out pretty well, but the further I went, and the more corners I turned, the creepier it got. I thought I heard a gurney being pushed toward me, and moved to one side, expecting to meet someone around the next corner, but when I got there, it was empty. There were no doors in that part of the corridor; only the fire extinguishers on the walls. I started talking to myself (only in my head… I figured whistling a happy tune might get me locked away somewhere) But every corner brought a new shadow, a new squeak, or the hiss and rattle of old pipes. Visions of the ghosts of nurses past and shrouded bodies from the morgue were in the back of my mind. In spite of wanting to just turn back, I was determined to give myself this little test of endurance, however frightening, and go on to the end. Door signs indicated various labs, nuclear medicine, inhalation therapy, caution..oxygen, prosthetics, boiler room….always a scary place in the movies, and none the less so in my head at that moment. I tried to ignore the brown spots on the floor , and convinced myself it was just paint. (even though it looked as though nothing had been painted in decades) The writing on the floor told me that the Inn was just ahead, and finally, running by now, I came to the stairs which led up into the lobby. Once there, it looked like any number of hotels I’ve stayed in; A bit of an anticlimax after the walk there. I wandered around the room for a bit and headed back down the stairs, to the hospital. It was no less eerie going back, but I knew that I could do it without making a scene and totally embarrassing myself. It seems a bit juvenile now, but at that moment, it was a small victory that I needed for myself. Sometimes small victories are the only ones that matter.
Take I
In March of 2004, my husband was in the hospital for a cardiac catheterization , after having a heart attack. (at the ripe old age of 55) Family members of patients are issued beepers so that they can be notified of the status of the procedures being done. Since I do not sit still well, and the weather was miserable, I decided to take a walk to the Riverside Inn, which is connected to EMMC by a series of dreary corridors, in essentially the basement of the hospital. The hospital was built in the 1890s, and the original portion is still there, where nurses used to receive their training. Since I was running on caffeine and nerves at the time, my imagination was a bit overactive. I did walk all the way to the hotel and back. I told myself that it wouldn’t be so bad in the daylight, and then I realized that there are no windows, so there would never be any daylight. It helped to pass the time, and kept me busy until Hubby was out of surgery and I could see him.
Take II
Have you ever walked from EMMC to the Riverside Inn through the underground maze? I have. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had my Cardiac Cath Lab issued beeper, Hubby was safely ensconced in the cath lab, surrounded by knowledgeable professionals, who were going to fix him up good as new (good as 40 anyway) , and the tv in the cardiac waiting room was driving me crazy…not to mention the morons waiting there. O.K. I should be charitable. Maybe they were as nervous as I was and their way of handling it was to be loud and obnoxious. At any rate, I needed to walk and since it was one of those crummy, slushy, days that we only seem to get in March, I figured I’d follow the arrows on the floor to the Inn. Kind of like my own Yellow Brick Road.
Things started out pretty well, but the further I went, and the more corners I turned, the creepier it got. I saw no one. I started talking to myself (only in my head… I figured whistling a happy tune might get me locked away somewhere) But every corner brought a new shadow, or the hiss and rattle of old pipes. Visions of the ghosts of nurses past and shrouded bodies from the morgue were in the back of my mind. In spite of wanting to just turn back, I was determined to give myself this little test of endurance, however silly, and go on to the end. Door signs indicated various labs, nuclear medicine, inhalation therapy, caution..oxygen, prosthetics, boiler room….always a scary place in the movies, and none the less so in my head at that moment. The writing on the floor told me that the Inn was just ahead, and at long last I came to the stairs which led up into the lobby. Once there, it looked like any number of hotels I’ve stayed in; A bit of an anticlimax after the walk there. I wandered around the room for a bit and headed back down the stairs, to the hospital. It was no less eerie going back, but I knew that I could do it without making a scene and totally embarrassing myself. It seems a bit juvenile now, but at that moment, it was a small victory that I needed for myself. Sometimes small victories are the ones that matter.
Take III
Have you ever walked from EMMC to the Riverside Inn through the underground maze? I have. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had my Cardiac Cath Lab issued beeper, Hubby was safely ensconced in the cath lab, surrounded by knowledgeable professionals, who were going to fix him up good as new (good as 40 anyway) , and the tv in the cardiac waiting room was driving me crazy…not to mention the morons waiting there. O.K. I should be charitable. Maybe they were as nervous as I was and their way of handling it was to be loud and obnoxious while listening to their soap operas and talking on their cell phones. At any rate, I needed to walk and since it was one of those crummy, slushy, days that we only seem to get in March, I figured I’d follow the arrows on the floor to the Inn. Kind of like my own Yellow Brick Road.
Things started out pretty well, but the further I went, and the more corners I turned, the creepier it got. I thought I heard a gurney being pushed toward me, and moved to one side, expecting to meet someone around the next corner, but when I got there, it was empty. There were no doors in that part of the corridor; only the fire extinguishers on the walls. I started talking to myself (only in my head… I figured whistling a happy tune might get me locked away somewhere) But every corner brought a new shadow, a new squeak, or the hiss and rattle of old pipes. Visions of the ghosts of nurses past and shrouded bodies from the morgue were in the back of my mind. In spite of wanting to just turn back, I was determined to give myself this little test of endurance, however frightening, and go on to the end. Door signs indicated various labs, nuclear medicine, inhalation therapy, caution..oxygen, prosthetics, boiler room….always a scary place in the movies, and none the less so in my head at that moment. I tried to ignore the brown spots on the floor , and convinced myself it was just paint. (even though it looked as though nothing had been painted in decades) The writing on the floor told me that the Inn was just ahead, and finally, running by now, I came to the stairs which led up into the lobby. Once there, it looked like any number of hotels I’ve stayed in; A bit of an anticlimax after the walk there. I wandered around the room for a bit and headed back down the stairs, to the hospital. It was no less eerie going back, but I knew that I could do it without making a scene and totally embarrassing myself. It seems a bit juvenile now, but at that moment, it was a small victory that I needed for myself. Sometimes small victories are the only ones that matter.
posted by marciamellow at 2/07/2006 05:34:00 PM
3 Comments:
Hey marcia m, your three takes on the Riverside Inn make me pleased all over again that I invented this assignment because it clearly got you cranked up to offer some first class material. I like very much the progression and slight additions and changes from take to take.
Can I use this in the future?
sure..I thought about expanding it to getting locked into the morgue by accident, and then my blood curdling scream would have awakened David, who would tell me it was a dream and I was no longer allowed to watch CSI.......(that seemed a bit over the top so I abandoned the idea!)
NO no, avoid the it-was-only-a-dream until the day when, old and full of honors, it comes to you that at your Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech you might use it. Not before!
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