Days 14-15, and a fic promise
Just back from the hepatologist's office, where my doctor sent me to follow up on some scans I had last year. (I'm fine; we're just, er, making sure that's true.) Her office is on the main campus of the huge teaching hospital three-quarters of my family used to work for, though not always in, and I love going there. I'm sure that says a lot about how I was never very sick growing up, nor was my family, that I would enjoy a hospital, but I do; it's big and bustling and exciting and has cutting-edge facilities and the elevators are deep so beds will fit in them and there are people in scrubs and lab coats joking with each other and I'm familiar with the place, know the system of entrances and roads and many of the hallways, remember eating in the front cafeteria when I was a kid, remember visiting wings like the maternity ward and emergency department as part of my job; and now it's fun to reimagine it as Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital too, or rather to soak up more details for possible future use in a House fic.
The points are:
(a) I will be going for a second MRI at some point, which I continue to think is cool, and this time I will finish the House/Wilson MRI PWP WIP (and many other three-letter acronyms) I started after the first scan; and
(a.1) You know you've been hanging out in fandom too much when... #64: While waiting for your gastroenterologist, you get out of the exam chair to squint at an anatomical diagram of the anus and rectum for research, and think about doing a semi-parody House/Wilson fic where they use all the crazy medical terms for the tiniest muscles and things. I want a sex scene that uses the terms "anal crypt" and "squamocolumnular junction."
(a.2) Relatedly, care of my sister: There is apparently a Burger King in the midwest somewhere with a typo on its front sign so that it is advertising "Black Anus Burgers."
(b) Here are some memories associated with this building, from when my dad worked there.*
*I know many of you follow my themes when you post your own memories, and that most people probably have unpleasant memories associated with hospitals, so you're just as welcome to post "the time I went to work with my parent" memories as hospital ones. As if you needed my blessing for that. Right. Memories now.
14. Elementary School
I remember:
- Going by one day after school with my sister and my mom, driving up all the way to the left of campus, to a trailer beside the building. I think he was in a transition point then between actual offices. Whenever I think of movie trailers, I substitute his in my head. I remember stepping up to the door and maybe going inside, but not much else.
- Possibly the same day, going over to the hospital proper and walking through the hallways. Each wing had a different color scheme for the floor tiles; one was dark brown and blue. And all the halls were lined with photographs. On that day, wherever we were, it was some photo contest they'd held or were holding, with big framed shots of hot air balloons and puppies and spraying city hydrants and close-up shots of kids with big eyes and freckles.
- A secretary my dad knew -- Ann, or Bernadette, I think -- once gave me candy when I was very young. Necco wafers or Sweet Tarts or something similar in a roll. For years, that's all I remembered of her. My dad still teases me about it.
- At Christmastime, the hospital always put together a ton of big paper gift bags. They must have been for pediatric patients, although at least some employees' children got them too, because every year my dad volunteered to help put them together, he brought us each one home. One year, I remember actually being there and seeing the bags in a room or hallway, and taking mine home. In various years, those bags brought us a New Kids on the Block doll (see second memory this year), colorful foam balls, funky '80s cloth-band watches, a slim automatic camera, and a Sony Walkman back when those were a Big Deal.
15. Middle School
My mom's best friend's son -- the one who lived around the corner and used to let us play with his Micromachine cars -- fell off his bike in middle school and ruptured his spleen. We went to visit him at the hospital. I remember that he seemed pretty normal lying in the bed. He told us the story of how it happened; something about hitting the curb or falling off and sitting on the curb, bumping the bicycle seat on the way down, walking home and then coming to the hospital. Someone else in the room -- one of his sisters, maybe -- had scraped her shin on something, and it had mostly scabbed up but still bled slowly and thickly and I kept looking at it as we all stood or sat there talking.
The points are:
(a) I will be going for a second MRI at some point, which I continue to think is cool, and this time I will finish the House/Wilson MRI PWP WIP (and many other three-letter acronyms) I started after the first scan; and
(a.1) You know you've been hanging out in fandom too much when... #64: While waiting for your gastroenterologist, you get out of the exam chair to squint at an anatomical diagram of the anus and rectum for research, and think about doing a semi-parody House/Wilson fic where they use all the crazy medical terms for the tiniest muscles and things. I want a sex scene that uses the terms "anal crypt" and "squamocolumnular junction."
(a.2) Relatedly, care of my sister: There is apparently a Burger King in the midwest somewhere with a typo on its front sign so that it is advertising "Black Anus Burgers."
(b) Here are some memories associated with this building, from when my dad worked there.*
*I know many of you follow my themes when you post your own memories, and that most people probably have unpleasant memories associated with hospitals, so you're just as welcome to post "the time I went to work with my parent" memories as hospital ones. As if you needed my blessing for that. Right. Memories now.
14. Elementary School
I remember:
- Going by one day after school with my sister and my mom, driving up all the way to the left of campus, to a trailer beside the building. I think he was in a transition point then between actual offices. Whenever I think of movie trailers, I substitute his in my head. I remember stepping up to the door and maybe going inside, but not much else.
- Possibly the same day, going over to the hospital proper and walking through the hallways. Each wing had a different color scheme for the floor tiles; one was dark brown and blue. And all the halls were lined with photographs. On that day, wherever we were, it was some photo contest they'd held or were holding, with big framed shots of hot air balloons and puppies and spraying city hydrants and close-up shots of kids with big eyes and freckles.
- A secretary my dad knew -- Ann, or Bernadette, I think -- once gave me candy when I was very young. Necco wafers or Sweet Tarts or something similar in a roll. For years, that's all I remembered of her. My dad still teases me about it.
- At Christmastime, the hospital always put together a ton of big paper gift bags. They must have been for pediatric patients, although at least some employees' children got them too, because every year my dad volunteered to help put them together, he brought us each one home. One year, I remember actually being there and seeing the bags in a room or hallway, and taking mine home. In various years, those bags brought us a New Kids on the Block doll (see second memory this year), colorful foam balls, funky '80s cloth-band watches, a slim automatic camera, and a Sony Walkman back when those were a Big Deal.
15. Middle School
My mom's best friend's son -- the one who lived around the corner and used to let us play with his Micromachine cars -- fell off his bike in middle school and ruptured his spleen. We went to visit him at the hospital. I remember that he seemed pretty normal lying in the bed. He told us the story of how it happened; something about hitting the curb or falling off and sitting on the curb, bumping the bicycle seat on the way down, walking home and then coming to the hospital. Someone else in the room -- one of his sisters, maybe -- had scraped her shin on something, and it had mostly scabbed up but still bled slowly and thickly and I kept looking at it as we all stood or sat there talking.