Word: ward
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After half an hour guys started coming back on the ward again, and then disappeared into their rooms. I was still alone. So after a while I went into the room that Mrs. Snowden said was mine. It was just like the other nine tiny singles of our ward: bed, chair, dresser, mirror...
...very different from any ward I'd ever been on as a volunteer. There was a very long hallway with a row of ten doors lining one wall. Each door led to a small bedroom. The opposite long wall, coated with thick yellow or green hospital paint, was pretty bare except for the door that led onto the ward, an old Gauguin print, and halfway down the length of the ward, the TV. I glanced up and down the long narrow room and noticed a few middle-aged men, either skinny or fat in cheap untucked cotton shirts and chinos...
...curled up in a fake leather chair for some time. Gradually I became accustomed to what little activity there was on the ward. The dominant sound was the TV. Below the TV there could be heard occasional snoring and shifting and shufling. And once in a while a far-away telephone ring from the nurses' office. That...
...hours, as I sat curled up in the armchair, I gradually made the transition from person to patient. The movement was down, and especially in. I experienced a luxurious, guilt-free withdrawal into myself. Eventually there was just me on Ward O-2 and a bunch of other crazy people with whom I felt close, and some vague abstractions like Harvard and Cambridge and Cape...
...WALKED out of my room back onto the ward. I sat in one of the big brown chairs across from the TV and for a while wallowed in the luxury of time. I knew I was going to be in the hospital for three days and during that time I had absolutely nothing to do. The only comparable experience I can remember was when my family was camping out on Cape Hatteras. It was Sunday night and raining and there were no books to read and no radio to listen to and no place to go. Then it was great...