Only one of the doors is open, the rest have been blocked, and a line of people are moving through it at slow but steady pace. Just inside, in the space between the two sets of doors, is a table with a line of automatic disinfectant dispensers. One by one the people in the queue get a squirt of disinfectant, a faint smell of alcohol rising into the air, and rub their hands together. They pass by a temperature check station, an IR camera on a tripod hooked to a computer, and into the entrance hall of the hospital. Inside they are met with a row of folding tables, set up like a temporary barrier. Each table holds a computer and behind it sits a nurse in purple gown, pink hair net, surgical mask and transparent face shield. The people spread out between these checking stations, handing over their ID cards as if they were at the passport control at the airport. Those who pass the ID check get a red stamp on their hands, almost like a nightclub though far less lighthearted, and are finally let through. I myself get the admittance stamp and can enter the hospital to do what I came for, I can only speculate about what happens to the ones who don't get it.
I’m half sitting in my hospital bed, not much to do except letting my eyes wander about the room. To the right, the peach colored curtain separating me from the next bed, to the left the leather clad visitor chair and the light switches on the wall marked A and B. The ceiling above with the four fluorescent tubes casting their sterile light over the room, next to it the grating covering the ventilation, the smoke detector off to the side, and the rail for the curtain running like railroad tracks through the landscape. My main companion, the cream colored … Read the rest
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