Hospitals are such restful places.

Outside our window there is heavy construction work going on. Huge diggers and trucks and jackhammers  pound pound pounding through my brain. A constant drill whirs in the background. Cars fly past. I can’t even hear myself breathe, let alone think.

Inside the ward babies are crying out, their most wretched, ear piercing wails for help because they are in pain, because there is no other way for them to let their carers know that their bodies ache. For comfort, for food, for medicine to pump through their veins to help them recover and rest.

The heartbreaking sobs never seem to stop.

Only because all the children here are distressed and if for an instant one relents to sleep or food or a cuddle, another has already started.

There are cleaners and orderlies. Trolleys of varying sizes trundle up and down the corridor of the ward. Delivering food and cleanliness and dry humour from the weary workers who push them.

Parents of the children who are to be discharged today are set free from their rooms, small babies crawling up and down the hallway and mothers pacing waiting for their release forms, waiting for life to begin again.

Waiting for normality.

Others cry.

Parents who have not yet obtained their healthy child status stare out into the glare of hospital life, wishing for relief, a meal, a toilet break and knowing they are things that will be scarce for today.

The relentless ping of the monitors and distributors, the tools which keep things in order resonate in our small room and in almost every room around us. 

Nurses and doctors, characters of various form (clowns, captains and  therapy animals) break the seal of our sanctuary and the cacophony of sound flows in like an ocean.

Doors open and close, they sometimes slam, chairs grate along linoleum floors, phones ring loudly, so as to be heard above the people who call out to others they know and some they do not. They cough and sneeze and snuffle and belch, their conversations seem to call for inclusion of my overstimulated mind. There is music and television blaring in the background and I feel the tension in my shoulders and my neck crackling like a growing fire.

I look out to the trees only to be confronted by a large yellow beast baring its scoop to me, like a jagged, monstrous mouth, so I close my eyes and watch the flecks of my soul pass through the darkness like spirits.

Humanity at its loudest.

Hospital humanity.

The girl in the bed sleeps on though, oblivious to the hum of the ward, the din of the construction work and the silent scream that erupts in my mind.

The paediatrician has been.

We still have two more days before we will earn our wings and fly away from here. 

Although I wish it were sooner, this place, in all of its chaos is strangely safe.

I know the routine, I know most of the nurses and almost all of the doctors.

There is comfort in this hubub of humans.

My sore head is nothing compared to the fear of a sick child so I will stay put and know that hospital can also be a haven.

I cannot relish in the sights and the sounds but I can stand firm in the knowledge that this is where we need to be for the girl to be well again.

If only for a while.