Visiting the Hospital

The last few days have been so busy for my family. On Tuesday my brother, Paul, had to have surgery on his cheek for a growth of some sort. Emily and I decided we wanted to go with my parents to wait at the hospital all day while he was in surgery. That meant we had to get up early to leave by 6:30 AM, I made myself get up at 5 o'clock because I always like to have plenty of time to get ready. The hospital is in a collage community, with big brick campuses, every store in one convenient place, beautiful architecture and just a friendly atmosphere. Maybe it's just me, but I love the collage part of the city. Everything is so... I just can't describe it. Almost everyone goes around on bikes, and everything is made of bricks. It's just the place I would like to spend an afternoon with a good book on one of the many stone benches in the shade of some trees. Anyway, we got there and took a tunnel from the parking ramp to the hospital. We stepped into the hospital and I just gazed around at the beautiful architecture. There was a sculpture art piece that caught my attention, it was a bunch of glass waves over rocks and some of the waves were lit up by a changing light. We went to the floor where my brother had to check in and we sat down in a busy waiting area, preparing ourselves for the long day ahead of us. Almost as soon as we sat down Emily wanted to get the stuff we packed out right away, which annoyed me, I mean we were going to have to be sitting there all day, we might as well take in the scenery while we were still feeling like it. People watching is a hobby of mine, but there is one thing that makes it hard for me to do it sometimes, it's that I don't want anyone to know that I'm looking at them. It’s like I can't get up enough courage to even look around a crowded room, I just look at my hands or the floor. This is a real curse because I really enjoy watching people... it's just that I'm afraid to do it! The rest of the day is spent in a different, more private waiting room for families having to wait all day; we played games like one where my sister and I ask each other what our favorite of anything is. I invented this game on a long car trip about a year or so ago, and now I like playing it whenever we have to wait somewhere for an hour or more. Sometime it really bugs Emily because she becomes bored of the game almost as soon as we start it. Thankfully Mom brought brought the computer so I was on that most of the day reading stuff off the internet as if it were one big eBook. Finally around three o'clock Paul's doctor came in and told us everything went well and that we could see him in an hour or so. Well that hour turned out to be 4 hours! We got the call that we can see him at about 6 o'clock and we headed up to the 6th floor. On the way over to Paul's room we passed this beautiful painting on the wall. I fell in love with it instantly, now I'm not that big of an art fan, I mean, I like to walk casually down an art gallery, but I just am not the person to spend hours studying the pictures. But this picture stood out to me. It was an abstract oil painting of a grass field and some mountains in the distance; I know what you're thinking, boring, right? But the colors were so vibrant, the deep blues, the lush greens and the streak of glowing white on the tips of the mountains. I don't suspect I'll ever see that painting again, but I will always say that that was my favorite painting and I wish I could hang it in my room. We went into my brother’s room and he was lying on the hospital bed, face all swollen from surgery and a white strap around his jaw, which they call a jaw-bra. This name, I have to say, brings up a rather disturbing picture in my mind. He was really sleepy and it was hard for him to talk, so we left after a few minutes. The next day my older sister came over from Fargo to visit Paul. Emily and I always look forward to when she comes to visit. my mom had left home early before I had even gotten up to work at our church. This weekend our church is having a garage sale, and somehow my mom always finds herself in charge of anything big, even if that event was someone else’s idea! We arranged it so that when Stephanie got home Dad, Emily, Stephanie, and myself would go and visit Paul, and when my dad left for work around noon Mom would come over as soon as she could. Believe it or not, I actually like to be at the hospital, I guess I just like the atmosphere. One thing I thought was cool at the hospital was some vending machines had sandwiches in them! I've heard of these kinds of machines that serve full meals, but I had never seen one in real life. Of course there were the normal junk food vending machines also and I joked with my mom that it would be funny if there was an Apollo candy bar in the vending machine like in Lost! it was a fun experience to be able to spend so much time at a hospital, it may be dull for many people, but I just enjoy being around people in these kind of atmospheres.