Monitors beep. Blood pressure pumps get tighter around me every fifteen minutes or so, but after a few times I forget it’s even there. Nurses poke and prod me with needles connected to IV’s, techies place weird stickers (I’m still not sure what they do, exactly) all over my chest every hour or so. The security guard tells me I’m his favorite patient because I asked to watch football. The next security guard is too obsessed with the Dallas Cowboys, so obsessed to the point where it’s almost dangerous to be a New England Patriots fan around him. His shift ends and a small, elderly woman who doesn’t say much takes his spot as the role of a sitter.
Hospital hours are by far the longest type of hours. Ten minutes, while it may feel like a breeze at home, feels like an eternity in the hospital. To make matters worse, there is no such thing as sleep. If you get forty-five minutes of sleep, like I (surprisingly) did, consider yourself blessed. If it’s not worry that jolts you awake, it’s a nurse checking your blood pressure or someone being brought to another room/wing.. or, in the worst case scenario, someone screaming.
There’s one specific incident I remember rather thoroughly. In the hallway outside of my room, room twenty-three, we meet Lonely Girl. Lonely Girl was a small, plump, loud, short-haired seventeen year old girl. She was diagnosed with a minor case of scoliosis and a torn tenant of some sort in her finger. However, that wasn’t the reason she was here. She a suicide patient, and would be transferred to the physiatric unit in a mental hospital shortly. At first, I found Lonely Girl rather annoying. She was constantly budding into my conversations with my sitter, and seemed to go on and on about her job or her family or whatever. She prevented me from getting the precious sleep that I needed more than anything else.
It all started with a phone call to Lonely Girl’s dad. He wasn’t informed she was in the hospital, since her mom had been the one informed. He thought she was lying, and Lonely Girl accused the nurse of lying to her. Lonely Girl pathetically began to scream and kick, and threatened to kill every security guard and nurse in the room if touched. Of course, she was restrained. The last thing I saw was her nurse walking to her with a syringe in hand. Then, complete silence.
Four days later, after being checked out of the hospital, my mom and I were discussing Lonely Girl’s incident on the ride home. My feelings towards my recollection of her incident were that she was annoying and loud, but I wasn’t looking through her perspective. Lonely Girl, hence the name, was lonely. She had no one to talk to, no one to support her, and she felt so trapped and alone that she thought suicide was the only way out. She was just begging for some positive attention, and she was being viewed as annoying. I am almost ashamed to say I put my needs in front of hers. Although I will probably never see her again in my life, she definitely opened my eyes.

Looking down at my arm, I see my blood has started to pool where the IV was injected, into my left forearm. It’s gross- black and blue with purplish red streaks of blood through it. A battle scar, so to speak. The blood pressure pump tightens around my arm for a quick five seconds, and a nurse comes in.
“How’s your day going, sweetie?” She asks, unstrapping the pump.
“Alright.”
“What’ve you been doing?”
“Just thinking.”

It’s almost impossible to record all my thoughts from Room 23.