I think it's smells, for me.
Everyone has a thing that makes them squirm. Maybe more than one. At work, it's smells. Hospitals have a smell all of their own, and each department smells slightly different. I think I found the Burns Unit the most unsettling - because it has ripe smells, but is warm and humid. The whole effect was... unusual.
A patient came to us the other day, alive, wishing they weren't. In too many pieces.
Three, since you were wondering.
It wasn't what they wanted, I guess. I think they wanted to die. Not this. We had to hide them.
The legs, in bags. The stumps, under a sheet. Enforced denial. Information control.
But it smelled like being in the local butchers, when I was a kid. I couldn't stop the images of a bloody floor, caked in sawdust. Raw meat smells like raw meat, whoever it belonged to... I'm not sure anyone else noticed in all the bustle. And, it's hard to explain to other people.
The patient? To my shame, I don't know...
Still hard to pay the Butcher's Bill.
1 comment:
Great post. Glad you're back.
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