Most everything gleamed because gleam means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. I’d finished with the tests but my doctor wouldn’t let me leave. That’s a bad sign and he knew it but he couldn’t reel it back, so in some sort of med-school compensation he offered a nicer room. I jumped on the deal but the room, as hospital rooms go, was a bit bigger but not any nicer, so I went for a walk. He allowed it, but only after saying not too far. And the bad signs just kept coming.

I left to look for the cafeteria, not because I was hungry, just curious if it gleamed like everything else. In the hallway white scrubs jostled toward me and I asked for directions. They said take the elevator down to the first floor and follow signs, but I was so twisted I had to ask for directions to the elevator. All I got was a gesture I interpreted to mean down the hall and to the left, but wasn’t sure. I passed a man mopping, the name Clarence stitched to his shirt, and I wondered if it was his shirt or someone else’s because he didn’t look like a Clarence. Clarences wear thick glasses and have barbed-wire mustaches that creep over the top lip. I turned left but got the gesture all wrong because there weren’t any elevators.

I know why he wanted me to stay. It’s like when a cop wants to ask a few questions, he already knows the answers but asks the questions anyway. Cops and doctors have a lot in common. I tracked wet floor back to Clarence and found he’d mopped himself clear down the hall. I asked about the elevators and he said I was almost there. I looked left and sure enough, there they were. I asked how often he mopped and he said non-stop, when he finished this floor he went up to the next. I said that’s a lot of mopping and he said we’re a hospital, that’s what we do, we clean things. I wondered out loud who cleans the ceilings and he answered me, though I wasn’t expecting an answer, and said ceilings don’t get dirty and besides, nobody sees them. But that’s not true, patients wheeled to surgery see them, how depressing if the last thing I saw before surgery was a dirty ceiling, but this time I kept my wonderings to myself.

My interest in the cafeteria waned and I went back to my room, barely beating a rhetorical knock. The door pushed open exposing a clipboard, my doctor hiding on the other side. He started talking but I couldn’t hear him. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. My eyes found the ceiling and I thought about Clarence – they really don’t get dirty. But it’s the other thing he said I can’t stop thinking about: We’re a hospital, that’s what we do, we clean things. I sure hope he’s right.

– Foster Trecost