Not Your TV Hospital

My doctor's office is located in a hospital. I don't have much experience with hospitals, but each time I go to see him I am always amazed at how relaxed the security is. Sometimes there is a guard at the door, but not usually, and even when he's there he's more of an information source than a barrier to enter.

I have a terrible habit of forgetting which floor my doctor's office is located on, and often get off on the wrong floor and have to backtrack. I also sometimes will enter the wrong door, as the hospital is made up of different buildings with separate elevator banks and not everything is connected. What appears to be a short cut is usually not.

The result is that I am often wandering around aimlessly, but the odd part is that nobody seems to notice or care. Today I wound up on the psychiatric floor and the door was locked off the elevator bank and a man in a white coat told me how to get buzzed in.

The other thing that strikes me every time is how dirty it is. I have this reaction to dr's offices not in the hospital, too, especially the examination rooms I wind up sitting in, barely-dressed, for far too long. Dirty corners of the floor, stained walls, broken equipment. Maybe this is normal everywhere, or it's just the city, but it's not what I expect to see.

On the other hand, I have learned to expect to pass clumps of medical staff outside the hospital on their smoke breaks.