“My first memory is about a hospital. Actually, to be concrete, my first memory is about running away from a hospital.

You see, when I was an infant my health was extremely fragile. Due to some asthmatic complications I was sent to the hospital and ordered to stay there. As any other child I cried my lot when my parents abandoned me to the fat nurses. But, unlike the other children, as soon as they left the room I made an escape plan and proceeded with it. As far as my mother tells me, I was eventually found trying to go down the stairs of the third floor.

The reason I was on those stairs is the part I remember.

At first the noise was low. I thought that it was one of the nurses and already had a plan on my head to run away from them. Since I was so little I can’t recall exactly the sound that came next but the concept that comes to me first is “leaking water”. Then I saw red and I taught that a diseased person had fallen there. So I went down the stairs to help them. Not that a two year old child would be a great help, but still I went down.

Later, as I said, I was found and my next memory is already related to the kindergarten. Sometimes I remember the event, since it was odd. But children usually add things out of their imagination to the story. Indeed the red and the steps were most likely from my overactive imagination and only the water leaking was real. After all it’s likely to find at least a broken sink in a main hospital.

And this is all that I find important. At least from the memories I have of this hospital. As you can see I am perfectly aware of my own condition. I would not lie about the reality.”

*

I smashed the cigarette against my pink heel after a rushed smoke as always. It had almost turned a habit, lighting it up as soon as I got out of the subway and finishing it in a rush at the door of the hospital. Fortunately my father did not require me to come everyday.

As I entered the hospital and found myself the only person that had to take a number to be heard at the Reception Desk, the sound of my heels disrupted the environment. I looked around just to conclude I was the only person in heels at the first floor of the hospital. With a sigh I waited to be redirected to the place I already knew and ran for it.

Elevator number 13 is located after the Cardiology Day Hospital, Infectious Diseases Day Hospital and Molecular Investigation Centre. This is the same as saying “go straight, turn left and go straight till you find it”. Even though the hospital has many signs pointing the elevators and some nice ladies to give information at each corridor branch it is quite an exasperate experience to find Elevator number 13. Also the walls have lovely posters about operations to the heart and to the brain and explanations about each department in the hospital. All very well illustrated with pictures of anonymous patients tied to beds. I almost ran to the elevator and waited on the silent vacant room (the waiting room for the Ophthalmology Triage). Finally I got to the safety of the hermetically closed elevator and pressed the button that said “4”. As it went up a childhood memory came up to me, but was immediately replaced by the common knowledge “hospitals in Japan do not have 4th floor because it brings bad luck”. How nice, my father was at the bad luck floor.

The visit was long as always. It’s always weird to visit my father since he can’t talk. To take off the cancer that was eating his throat the doctors had to put a tube into his neck. It’s quite fun to watch him sneeze with the tube, even though it may be disgusting to a less trained person. I brought him a notebook so he can write easily without loosing the sheets all around his room. Have I referred that he is on the best room of the whole section? He even has a remote control bed, the only one in the hospital. Quoting father “it’s because the doctor is my friend”. He always says this with tears in his eyes so I’m glad the doctor is his friend.

Since he stopped talking my life turned quite silent.

Going back, the elevator number 13 never seemed available. It went up and down without stopping; when it stopped it was crowded with doctors and wheelchairs. The next time it was a corpse being taken to the morgue and I did not really want to have a conversation with it. I went down the stairs then.


At first I thought it was a nurse or some doctor. Some of them like to use the stairs and pretend they are healthy. But when the sound changed to something leaking… I remembered. That night when I was two years old; at that same hospital.

“Ok, the next thing must be blood and this time I may find a dead person in the stairs”, I thought to myself laughing.

My heels echoed through the eight floors of the hospital. It is an odd feeling to stay at those stairs all alone so I tried to get in the elevator of the third floor. Inside its safety I clicked the button and went down.

However the place where it discharged was not very familiar. The white walls were yellow and dirty and the whole place was full with garbage. Again the heels echoed. I pointed to myself to bring Converse shoes the next time. I went through the whole place. It was just like the Reception floor but older, dirtier and abandoned. Suddenly the corridor branched. Sitting in the rotten chairs a group of hospital staff members were together. Their uniforms seemed dirty and outdated and, even though there were signs against it on the wall, all of them were smoking. Their eyes were dark and they were all very pale, almost yellow as the walls surrounding. They looked at me for a second and they turned their eyes to the emptiness again, ignoring the person that was glued to the wall right in front of them. My first impetus was running, like one would do on a movie, but a lady should never lose her composure. I just walked like nothing had happened.

The steps echoing on the abandoned corridors were mine, but nobody was there to tell me if the mysterious nurse of the third floor was not behind me. Biting my nails I kept going. The corridor was endless so I quitted and decided to turn a couple of times. The whole space seemed the same.

I slipped. For some reason I turned into an old bathroom. The whole floor was wet and the water leaked from many places. Should I laugh then? It was almost like my escape from the hospital so many years ago. The steps, the water… It was missing the red, the red from my imagination. All those memories were an accident of the imagination, but now they were happening. Maybe they were not imagination after all. Maybe they were planned to punish me from my escape. If so why were they punishing me again? Now I was not trying to escape, I was simply lost.

Only the red was missing. The red was blood, it was blood for sure. And the water dropping was most likely blood as well, blood dropping from the knife of an enraged nurse. Everything fit well and I kept there, sat on the pool provoked the broken sinks, just waiting for the blood and for the nurse. The diseased person that I wanted to help so many years ago… I could understand now. It was not imagination; it was not an accident of my mind: I was the diseased person. Soon enough it would happen again and I would be punished.

Am I running from the hospital? Escaping? I thought I was just lost. Maybe when I was little I was also lost and then convinced myself that it was a premeditate escape.

A hand touched my shoulder.

“Are you lost?”

It was a woman, all dressed in red.

“I am lost, sorry. Can you tell me how to get out of here?”

She smiled and indicated me.

I tried to tell her that it was wrong. That was not the place I was looking for. I really tried to complain, to tell them that I was really lost. Not trying to escape. Maybe they made it all on purpose. First they made up my mind when I was two years old, just to twist my memories. Now the whole thing happens again so I can’t say if it’s present or past. I am very sure that I am twenty and not two! Or maybe the echo was not provoked by my heels but by those of the nurse… Nobody can come here and say “no she does not belong here”. Why is my father silent and unable to talk? Life is so silent when he can’t talk… They also don’t believe that he can sneeze through his tube.

Now I really want to get out. I wonder if I will be able to get out of this place and run through the stairs like I did before. I also don’t like the woman in red. Like all the other psychiatrists she is awfully full of herself.