Locomotion

When I was being treated for Hodgkins Disease at Cook Childrens Medical Center, (in a building that is strangely no longer there) we spent a majority of the daily chemo administrations in the play room - a two-roomed area full of books, toys, bald-headed children, and their families.  There are two things that bring back that time so violently that it makes me almost physically ill: one is a combination of smells - a mix of hospital, humanity, and Heparin.  Usually an IV is required to bring that specific smell back into my life.  The second is the sound of model trains.

Some brilliant benefactor thought it would be a great idea to build a tiny train track that moved throughout both rooms (so you could never get away from the noise) that would toot its horn all. the. time.  All the time.  I hated that thing so much.  It would wobble on it's tracks built into the wall just below the ceiling, making it's loop through both play rooms and tooting that infuriating toot, scratching its way on old toy wheels into your subconscious.

When I walked in to the hospital for my shift tonight and saw this thing, it was the first time in my almost three years of volunteering there that my gag reflex had to be controlled.  Leave the trains to BNSF and the cross-country tracks.  There's no place for something not to be touched (nor something so obnoxious) in a children's hospital.

Dig by Incubus