P7 A Hospital Scene
The coolness of the bleak spring dawn gradually leaves the bitumen, as the warmth of the awakening sun undresses the night, revealing a dull red brick building known as Hachioji Hospital. The third floor is reserved for the prematurely born, struggling for life with the aid of incubators.
The viewing area on the third floor is a narrow corridor, dimly lit by three dust-covered light bulbs, and barely fifteen feet long. It is furnished with four well-worn lounge chairs and a few scattered books. The faded orange wall, cracked with peeling paint, is stained with hair grease. On the opposite side of the corridor is the viewing glass, starting three feet from the dull linoleum floor, rising up to the cobwebbed ceiling. It reveals a completely different existence.
The world on the other side of the glass is a brightly lit room with rows of fluorescent lights, sterilised with the lingering smells of disinfectants, and alive with the humming and beeping sounds of the life support systems attached to twelve evenly spaced mechanical wombs, their monitor’s display in red, blue and yellow, their tenant’s heart rate, pulse and oxygen level.
Nurses wearing thoughtful expressions, masks, gloves, and pink gowns adorned with Walt Disney characters move attentively observing each tiny patient with silent efficiency.
A card on the side of the incubator closest to the viewing glass displays information of its occupant, an infant born twenty-three weeks too early and yet to be named. His eleven-ounce body, no bigger than an adult’s hand, occasionally twitches. His arms and legs, lightly restrained by gauze to stop the tubes from dislodging, instinctively stretch and kick as his heart beats over 200 times per minute in the hollow of his under developed chest. At times it seems that his heart is trying to escape and that at any moment may explode through his frail frame.
His almost naked body has a fine layer of downy hair forming unique patterns, and is dressed only with electrodes and pierced with intravenous tubes carrying life-giving drugs. Through his nostrils down his throat and into his stomach rest more tubes, pumping oxygen and supplying thimble doses of milk. Petite black eye patches cover his still fused eyes protecting them from the cool blue fluorescent light that is helping him to fight off jaundice. His taut, almost transparent crimson yellow skin exhibits a fine red and green network of veins and arteries and shows the outline creases of his underdeveloped bones.
His mother, attired in a hospital gown her hair under a protective net, sits patiently next to the incubator on a stool. Her tired face wears a forlorn expression, shoulders sagging, hands cupped on her lap, she rests her head against the plastic womb, with swollen and desperate eyes, she stares helplessly at her son within.
All the while, the life support system hums and beeps effortlessly, its monitor displaying his vital signs. The impersonal high tech machinery relieves him of the responsibilities of the independent life he is helpless to fight for alone.