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15 The Hospital The hospital reeks so much of doom, of too much chlorine, it’s a screaming cliché of a place, gray food and smutch-green walls, the clattering, saddening afternoons, midnight wakenings to draw blood, force pills, check the pulse, the tubes, the TV, the fevers, the blankets, the slope of the bed, the heat in the room, the lay of the land. A plastic bracelet’s at your wrist with your name, you won’t be mistaken for someone else but nobody knows who you are. There is only this to get through and the next day and enough days until I notice you’re alive enough to speak the words you’re almost too drugged to say distinctly: Take me home. ...

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