The View From Nyel’s Room

We’ve only been outside the walls of the hospital once in the last twelve days.  For me, that has been a choice.  Not so, of course, for patient Nyel.

For one thing, his heart is under constant surveillance by dint of (now there’s an expression you don’t hear very much these days!) a heart monitor that he wears in the pocket of his hospital gown. Five ‘leads’ go to sticky patches affixed to his chest and his heartbeat is magically transmitted to a monitoring station down the hall.  Unless he has permission from his doctor, Nyel must stay ‘within  range’ which, basically, is this particular unit of the hospital.

Neither of us feels in the least bit stir-crazy.  There is always something interesting going on and the people with whom we interact – from doctors and nurses and pharmacists to housekeepers and education specialists and food servers – are personable and often entertaining.  Between times, Nyel dozes and I work on various writing projects.  Although Nyel brought a book to read, he has not yet opened it.  Nor is the TV a temptation – not until time for the evening news and Jeopardy.

Out Nyel’s Window

The room is comfortable temperature-wise.  There is a thermostat with numbers and gauges so tiny as to be unreadable for our old eyes.  And, besides, it’s in centigrade.  We are pretty much oblivious of the outside weather except when we purposely look out our window.  We’ve noted intermittent rain, clouds, sunshine.  No wind which, as I think about it, is the biggest difference from the weather at home – that and the somewhat warmer temperatures, only known to us by checking the weather apps on our cell phones.

Day before yesterday, Nyel got permission to go out of monitoring range so that we could visit the Children’s Garden.  We can see it from our window and Nyel had noted that the sunshine was making its way to an inviting looking bench.  That’s where we headed – down five flights in the elevator, turn left, a short walk to the Garden entrance, and then a few more steps to the bench!  Ahhh!  Sunshine!  We took a few selfies…  and looked like moles seeing the sun for the first time.

Squinting Selfie

I wonder if this is the life in store for future generations.  Living in a climate controlled environment, self-contained against the havoc wreaked on our planet by the non-believers and the greedy and the all-about-me generations.  But with benches and fake trees in virtual gardens instead of real ones…  I wonder if that would be better than the alternative.  But… I digress.