If hospitals could remember

If walls could talk, would they want to?

I’ve been here since this building was built, back in 1844. I haven’t been moved, I haven’t been modified. I’ve been painted a few times, a couple of holes drilled but I am still standing. I’ve made some new friends along the way, but lost some too. The layout of this hospital changed frequently at the beginning. They were finding their feet, I guess, finding the most efficient way to work. Walls have gone up, walls have come down. We used to share stories with each other all the time. We got excited when a new wall would come, for they would bring stories from another part of the hospital.

One room for who's ceiling I support has changed a few times, but one has remained the same. I have always been the wall for an operating theatre. I have learned a lot over the last century and have seen the medical field evolve so much. I feel oddly proud for the humans that work within my building. They go into this theatre with patients who shouldn’t survive, but they fight death tooth and nail and bring the patient back. It really is incredible work. Whilst I was proud of them, I was also proud of myself. For I gave them safe shelter to do their miraculous work. Without me, the ceiling would fall. Without me, there would be no theatre.

On my other side, this room has changed a few times. It was originally a recovery ward. Made sense as it was close to the theatre. I found myself recognising patients, and thinking “Oh you again! You were the little boy who broke his leg falling down the stairs!”

After a couple of decades, I was elated to find this was changed to a maternity ward. I witnessed the birth of thousands of babies.

It was years later, after a new wall was put up next to me, that I realised something. And it changed me forever.

I was regaling them about my experiences in the maternity ward when it struck me whilst I could remember all of the joyous births I could recall, in perfect detail, all the deaths I had witnessed there.

Yes I had seen thousands of babies born to this world, but there were also times when the babies did not survive. Stillborn. Complications. Premature. Birth defects. I had seen them all. And I could remember them all.

After this, I tried to focus on the successful births, and commit them all to memory.

Eventually, the maternity ward was moved and a small part of me rejoiced. I couldn’t take seeing another tragic birth. But… my joy was short-lived.

The maternity ward was now the ICU. The sickest patients, the ones that had small chances of survival. Pessimistic, I know, but after 150 years hope starts to run a little dry.

I have seen more death than any wall I know. Every human that comes through here might see someone die once, maybe twice in their life (excluding the doctors and nurses, of course). But I? I have seen thousands upon thousands of deaths. Some tragic, premature, accidental, intentional, natural, due to complications, and some that were just plain wrong. I had seen death in people who were over 100 years old, and some not even 100 seconds.

I used to be proud to hold this hospital up. Now I long for the day that I am knocked down, so that I can be taken elsewhere. But without me, this hospital would not stand.

So here I remain.

I try not to watch.

I try not to see any more death.

If walls could talk… would they want to?