Notes from a study chair.

You could blindfold me and I would always know when I was inside a hospital. There is a distinct aura of the place, combined with certain smells and sounds.

The first clue is always the airconditioning – frigid to the extreme, barely a step above a refrigerator, as if to preserve all within like a giant cryogenic freezer. I forget to bring a jumper half the time, and whenever I stop moving I always end up huddling, shivering from the excessive cool. When I am not required to go onto the wards or interact with patients I usually prefer to wear jeans and my college jersey with my hair down, for warmth and comfort.

The second is that unique hospital smell – the combination of coldness from the aforementioned aircon, as well as that slight antiseptic smell. For me I love the smell of chlorhex, especially when I’ve been on a clinic with certain “aromas” and cannot help myself from compulsively scrubbing my hands until they smell chemically clean. I also use the alcohol based no water sprays liberally so that my hands always smell of hospital. I can handle that smell much better than the latex of gloves. Depending on the ward or the clinic there is that other smell – human smell. On some wards it is blood which is ferric and slightly acrid but non offensive. In the geriatric and gastro wards quite often the fetid smell of a daycare centre. In renal wards the everpresent whiff of stale urine. Even the hospital libraries, in this case well removed from the wards, have their own distinctive smell – old books, journals, and yet a lingering eau d’antiseptic. Different from a community library with its children’s corner, romance novel stands and shelves of war histories.

There is a bustle in hospitals as well – constant movement. As I walked in today there was a huddled group of bewildered new nursing students chatting just inside the main entrance waiting to be told what to do and where to go. The cheerful volunteers, all elderly, but sprightly, with names like Mavis and Neville in their conspicuous clothing taking visitors to the various far flung corners of the hospital maze. A woman crying outside the chapel, uncaring if people saw the tears falling unhindered from her swollen eyelids; an island in the chaos. The elderly ladies dressed in their Sunday best sitting up primly, waiting for clinics that have not yet opened, reading Mills and Boon novels with their lurid covers. And amongst all of them, barely seen as they streak through, the staff, the nurses and doctors, dancing their hurried quickstep, heralded only by stairwell doors banging as they eschew the ancient lifts in their rush to reach the wards.

It is usually not very noisy in the hospital, aside from the general hum of activity. Unless you are in ICU where there are the machines that go ping, or in surgery where machines beep and blip and monitors crackle, and there are sawing, sizzling or slicing sounds. Mostly it is just the sound of movement, of pagers occasionally beeping and mobile phones ringing with muted conversations unheard over the general hubbub. Occasionally the serenity is split by the peal of an approaching ambulance or the low thud of the chopper blades as it comes in to land on the carpark roof, but in spite of what TV would have us believe, this is not as common as you’d expect. I still look up every time I hear the chopper, wonder who has come with their tale of woe.

And hidden in the corner of all this activity today is me. Curled up barefoot in a cubicle in the library, surrounded by textbooks and a smuggled in mega hot chocolate to keep the chilblains way. Hand drawn diagrams of the female reproductive system littered around me with scribbled notes in the margins. A haphazard pile of hand written notes around 30 pages thick which I’ve been doodling over as I read through and notate mindlessly. My hospital lanyard hanging limply from my neck over my crisply ironed hospital clothes that I wish I had ignored and chosen my usual study attire of jeans and jersey instead. My hair raked back and rumpled from grabbing fistfuls as I support my head as I become engrossed in a textbook, my neat black skirt getting crumpled and gradually creeping up my thighs as I contort into even weirder positions to get comfortable (I love sitting cross legged – but can’t because I’m wearing a silly skirt).

It is at times like this, that I look out at the crisp autumn morning outside and wish that I was anywhere but here. I love my life, I love my studies and I love the career that I’ve chosen, but being inside is torturous when you’d rather be out in the wild. Taking a trip through winding roads into the spectacular nearby forests, to find hidden groves in which to spread out a picnic and lie entwined with someone who makes your blood run like fire.

Instead I flip the page, pick up a clean sheet of notepaper and my pen and begin to summarise. Reign in my imagination and allow myself only to dream on the hour when I take a brief break from the texts.