Close your head, I see your thoughts!

Last Saturday, I was faced with the unfortunate circumstance of going to the hospital to visit my 6 year old brother. A high fever, a sore throat and some delirious mumblings prompted my mom to get him checked-out at the hospital. After derailing my action-packed Saturday plans to go to the hospital I hoped for the best, but I had no idea what was ahead of me.

While my brother laid in the bed waiting to be treated, I roamed around the pediatric ward like the mischievous person I am. I took two steps out of the room and I was almost trampled by a group of people who ran alongside a stretcher as if they were athletes on the US Olympic bobsled team. I tried my hardest to catch a glimpse of the poor soul on the stretcher, but I only saw her arm. On closer observation, I noticed that the arm that I saw was not attached to anything. The injured patient actually used her left hand to hold her right arm, which was completely unattached to her body. Why would they bring this 13-14 year old girl to the pediatric ward? I don’t know. The sight that I saw was like a weird Don Hertzfeldt film and I felt like I was high on shrooms or something, so I went back into my brother’s room to recuperate. But that was just the beginning.

I wandered outside of the room once again and somehow ventured out into the waiting room, which had a view of the hospital’s driveway. In the driveway was a woman and a young child on a stretcher. Suddenly, someone yelled out “MAKE WAY” and the “stretcher-pusher” wheeled the woman and child past me at supersonic speeds. About an hour later, the waiting room’s door opened and the mother and son reentered the waiting area. Apparently the hospital’s staff transferred the people from the stretcher to a wheelchair, but something was odd about this image—something had gone horribly wrong. The woman had a broken arm which was bandaged, and the child….oh man, the child. I need a new paragraph to talk about the child.

The child was a cute looking child who couldn’t have been more than 4 years old. He sported a wonderful smile on his face, bright blue eyes, and a hole…a hole in his head. One could almost see directly into his head via a dime-sized hole between his two eyes. Externally, I tried my hardest not to cringe, but internally I was screaming “WHAT HAPPENED?!?? CLOSE THAT HOLE!!! WHY ARE THEY IN THE PEDIATRIC DEPARTMENT?! I CAN SEE HIS BRAIN!! WHAT KIND OF SICK BUSINESS IS THIS?! THIS IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE! I’LL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS! I HOPE HE RECOVERS FROM THAT!!” The worst part was that the doctors and nurses in the department seemed completely unfazed by the hole in his head. To add to the horror of the incident, the kid never shed a single tear.

I could easily continue speaking about what was going through my head at that moment, but I don’t think that the english language contains the correct words to accurately express my thoughts.

My brother was finally diagnosed, treated, and discharged and I was free to leave from the bloody pediatric inferno. I hopped in my car and drove towards the hospital’s exit when I saw a homeland security helicopter landing on the hospital’s landing pad. I didn’t bother to stick around to see the response of the emergency room because I had already accurately predicted it: ”just send him to the pediatric ward.”

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