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Brenda Alvarado

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

5 October 2017

Hospital: Path to Recovery or Death?

Have you ever felt a cold shiver down your spine when entering a hospital? It is a space full

of sickness and bacteria that kills you slowly. At the spark of an illness, a sick patient enters that

place to walk out feeling better, but does that really happen? A hospital is a space where humans,

for example myself, battling illness are treated by evil doctors who utilize monstrous aspects like

injections and oxygen masks, often times resulting never ending. Through these monstrous

aspects inhabiting this space, the fear of always having to come back for a cure, as well as being

consumed by an illness and leaving behind loved ones is revealed. There are monstrous

individuals and objects trapped inside those walls ready to attack once you check in feeling blue.

Illnesses are the primary monsters that inhabit in hospitals and prey on your body leaving you

often dead. In the year 2012, I was hospitalized due to a cyst in my ovaries. I was trapped inside

four dirty white walls that penetrated the smell of sterilized needles. When in a hospital, there are

distinct reasons why individuals are there. After six days in the hospital, a woman who was

situated next to me, with only a curtain dividing us, infected me with strep throat. This made me

become unstable and weak. I was afraid to die thinking that this illness would consume my body

and leave me pulseless. A fear was not only instilled in my head, but in my families as well. My

parents were afraid to lose a loved one so young. The last thing I wanted was to worry my family

and be stuck inside those four walls any longer. I mainly feared ending up worse than how I

checked in due to an illness I caught in a germ controlled space. Through, My Zombie, Myself:
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Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead, Chuck Klosterman asserts, This is our collective fear

projection: that we will be consumedall of it comes endlessly, and if we surrender we will

be over taken and absorbed (Klosterman, p.42). Similar to my worries, humans are afraid that

illness will consume and eventually kill them. They value their life and dont want to lose it to an

illness. As much as hospitals fight to kill illnesses, its rarely possible. Relating to Klostermans

point, he states that zombies are never ending and as killing them leads to their reproduction.

Patients are often mislead to believe that hospitals is where illness is cured. Often times,

hospitals are the epicenter of an illness causing it to spread and forcing you to always come back

for more treatment. Illness is similar to these zombies; sometimes no matter how much you treat

it and try to find a cure it often comes back resulting in a terminal illness.

Doctors are the real-life monsters in this space who utilize needles, scissors, and other tools as

weapons to inject venom leaving us often unconscious. We are required to trust our lives in the

hands of a doctor because they are considered experts, but are they really? Every day in the

hospital was hell to me and I couldnt come out even if I tried. I was terrified of the man in the

white suit that always caused me pain. My treatment consisted of having to be injected two times

a day with a fluid I considered venom because it would trigger something in my mind that often

rocked me to fall asleep for long periods of time. The doctor would bring his evil sidekicks and

they would perform ultrasounds on my lower stomach to check on my cyst and the pressure

being applied would put me in a lot of pain. In, Here Be Monsters, Ted Genoways explains,

The unknown evil, in this case will not turn out to be a stuntman in a rubber suit. In this one

way, we can all agree: those who do us harm are real and they are among us (Genoways, p.132).

We come to the hospital and we put our lives in the hands of these tormenting experts. Doctors
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are supposed to make us feel better and full of life again, but instead they inject us with this

venom that sucks the life right out of our bodies.

A stay in the hospital is supposed to be welcoming and comforting; instead we are chained

and held hostage by wires and cables running from our arms, our nose, our stomach, and our

mouth. I was automatically situated on a flat bed with a railing on each side which later held up

the wires attached to my body. A total of ten wires connected me to a machine that recorded and

kept track of my health. The first few days I had an oxygen mask and IV needles in my arms to

control my breathing in order to remain stable. I couldnt get up from the bed under any

circumstances. This made me feel trapped with no way out. Later, I had patches connected to my

stomach to make sure new cysts didnt develop in there. This required me to be on an empty

stomach for hours and hours, leading me to starvation. The worst part of it all was having a tube

through my mouth with a camera on the tip in order to record what was going on in the lower

part of my body. Through this, I felt as if the illness took my voice away and I couldnt call out

for help. A feeling of helplessness triggered fear in my mind during those two weeks at the

hospital. Sometimes it can feel as if we are trapped and we cant escape even if we tried. These

gadgets monitor us to make sure we dont try to leave. There is a monstrous feeling knowing that

the wires are like heavy chains all throughout our body.

Although to some the hospital is a death trap, others see the hospital as a beautiful place that

brings new life. Parents to be check into the hospital anxious to meet their creation of love.

Unlike others, they trust the doctor with not only their life, but their babies as well. Upon

leaving, they thank him for his work and for delivering an abundance of happiness to them.

Parents value the work of the doctor and the services provided by the hospital to make sure the

baby is in good standing. When my room was quiet, I could faintly hear the cry of a newborn
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baby making its grand entrance into the world. During my stay, I heard an enormous amount of

newborns give their first cry. While I was checking out of the hospital, new mothers were also

being sent home with the new addition to their family. I was still in pain, but the mothers were

happy, smiling, and sharing cuddles to the babies in their arms. I was received by my parents and

they had a sad expression on their face while helping me in the car. On the other hand, the

newborns were greeted with a smile from their new family. In a hospital, there are distinct

feelings being expressed. In Monsters and Messiahs, Mike Davis addresses, Some people

locked themselves in their houses and refused to send their children to school. Others had trouble

sleeping and were afraid to take the trash out at night. The majority, however, simply

chuckled (Davis, p.49). As compared above, the patients who are ill become pessimistic of

the outcome of their illness, while the patients receiving a gift of new life are joyful and

optimistic.

Concluding, a hospital is a space in which illness attacks the weak patients coming in to be

helped out. The doctor whom is expected to cure the patient, but instead ties them to a bed with

wires and gadgets to later perform painful procedures, is the primary monster in this space.

Painfully, needles and syringes are stabbed all throughout the patients body by these doctors for

treatment. We fear an attachment to the hospital and always having to return. Once youre in,

youre really never out. Youll always come back for checkups and consultations with the

monster in the white suit. In the beginning of our lives, the hospital is a place of happiness and

new beginnings. Sadly as we grow, to some it becomes a place of death and a last breath. So now

ask yourself, have you been held hostage and attacked by monsters? Does this space send chills

down your spine? What is the hospital to you, a place of live or a place of death?
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Works Cited

Davis, Mike. Monsters and Messiahs. Monsters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited by

Andrew J. Hoffman, 1st ed., Bedford/St. Martins, 2016, pp. 46-49.

Genoways, Ted. Here Be Monsters. Monsters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited by

Andrew J. Hoffman, 1st ed., Bedford/St. Martins, 2016, pp. 130-133.

Klosterman, Chuck. My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead. Monsters:

A Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited by Andrew J. Hoffman, 1st ed., Bedford/St. Martins,

2016, pp. 40-44.