Hospital Stay Quotes

Yes,” I whisper. The red blinking light on one of the cameras catches my eye. I know I’m being recorded. “Yes,” I say more forcefully. Everyone is drawing away from me—Gale, Cressida, the insects—giving me the stage. But I stay focused on the red light. “I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I’m right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors.” The shock I’ve been feeling begins to give way to fury. “I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there’s a cease-fire, you’re deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.” My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. “This is what they do! And we must fight back!” I’m moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage. “President Snow says he’s sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?” One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. “Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!

Always. In the twilight of the morphling, Peeta whispers the word and I go searching for him. It's a gauzy, violet-tinted world, with no hard edges, and many places to hide. I push through cloud banks, follow faint tracks, catch the scent of cinnamon, of dill. Once I feel his hand on my cheek and try to trap it, but it dissolves like mist through my fingers. When I finally begin to surface into the sterile hospital room in 13, I remember. I was under the influence of sleep syrup. My heel had been injured after I'd climbed out on a branch over the electric fence and dropped back into 12. Peeta had put me to bed and I had asked him to stay with me as I was drifting off. He had whispered something I couldn't quite catch. But some part of my brain had trapped his single word of reply and let it swim up through my dreams to taunt me now. "Always.

Books were her salvation. As a child, she’d had a shelf of childhood favorites that she loved enough to read over and over again. But after, during the hospital stay and the long voyage and the cold days in Idlewild’s dreary hallways, books became more than mere stories. They were her lifeline, the pages as essential to her as breathing.

I pat Eden's head. "I'll be right back okay? Stay on the bench. Don't go anywhere. If someone tries to make you move, you scream. Got it?

Maybe all hospitals should import groups of rabble-rousing punk rockers to kick-start the languishing patients’ hearts.

...a primary feature of the experience of staying in a psychiatric hospital is that you will not be believed about anything. A corollary to this feature: things will be believed about you that are not at all true.

At the Hospital, everyone thinks about dying.And I'd never been much for romanticizing death-especially not suicide. I'd always been a fan of staying alive. After all, you basically do all you can not to die. All the time. The search for immortality isn't just from storybooks. every day you do it. You buckle your seat-belt, you take vitamin supplements, look both was before you cross the street. And you really think your doing all you can. Bullshit. We can lift weights for fucking hours and we're still going to die.

When I finally begin to surface into the sterile hospital room in 13, I remember. I was under the influence of sleep syrup. My heel had been injured after I'd climbed out on a branch over the electric fence and dropped back into 12. Peeta had put me to bed and I had asked him to stay with me as I was drifting off. He had whispered something I couldn't quite catch. But some part of my brain had trapped his single word of reply and let it swim up through my dreams to taunt me now. "Always.

From a distance,' he says, 'my car looks just like every other car on the freeway, and Sarah Byrnes looks just like the rest of us. And if she's going to get help, she'll get it from herself or she'll get it from us. Let me tell you why I brought this up. Because the other day when I saw how hard it was for Mobe to go to the hospital to see her, I was embarrassed that I didn't know her better, that I ever laughed at one joke about her. I was embarrassed that I let some kid go to school with me for twelve years and turned my back on pain that must be unbearable. I was embarrassed that I haven't found a way to include her somehow the way Mobe has.' Jesus. I feel tears welling up, and I see them running down Ellerby's cheeks. Lemry better get a handle on this class before it turns into some kind of therapy group. So,' Lemry says quietly, 'your subject will be the juxtaposition of man and God in the universe?' Ellerby shakes his head. 'My subject will be shame.

I guessed that he was one of those ambitious young physicians who more and more fill the profession, opportunists with a fashionable hoodlum image, openly hostile to their patients. My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.

Mom taught me not to look away from the worst but to believe that we can all do better. She never wavered in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. Mom taught me that you can make a difference in the world and that books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others. Mom also showed me, over the course of two years and dozens of books and hundreds of hours in hospitals, that books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close, even in the case of a mother and son who were very close to begin with, and even after one of them has died.

The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections. We lie here in our hospital bed of the present (what nice clean sheets we get nowadays) with a bubble of daily news drip-fed into our arm. We think we know who we are, though we don't quite know why we're here, or how long we shall be forced to stay. And while we fret and write in bandaged uncertainty - are we a voluntary patient? - we fabulate. We make up a story to cover the facts we don't know or can't accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing fabulation; we call it history.

That Tim Shepherd dude called again. You really need to make time in between getting shot at and hospital stays to call him back.

The trade-off seems like a no-brainer. Would you rather be bribed during your hospital stay with made-to-order omelets or would you rather be, for example, not dead?

How do you know your injuries aren’t life threatening? You’re covered in the fluid from its guts. How do you know it’s not poisonous?” “If it’s poisonous, we’ll deal with it when I feel sick.” “Fine. I’ll stay here with this thing, and you will drive yourself to the hospital.” “No.” He hit me with an alpha stare. I opened my eyes as wide as I could. “Why, of course, Your Majesty. What was I thinking? I will go and do this right away, just please don’t look at me.

Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.

I wonder if I should get one of those baby-on-board signs. That way the assholes behind me can learn a little patience instead of laying on the horn like we’re all in some motherfucking emergency,” Tucker grumbles as he helps me out. “What’s going to happen when one of those fuckers comes to your door wanting to take Jamie out on a date?” Tucker stops abruptly, causing me to collide with his stiff back. “She’s going to an all-girls school.” “Okay, so what happens if one of those fuckers is a female wanting to take Jamie out on a date?” “None of this would be a problem,” he accuses, “if we stayed in the hospital like I suggested.

But then again, he would think, what about his life- and about Jude's life, too- wasn't it a miracle? He should have stayed in Wyoming, he should have been a ranch hand himself. Jude should have wound up - where? In prison, or in a hospital, or dead, or worse. But they hadn't. Wasn't it a miracle that someone who was basically unexceptional could life a life in which he made millions pretending to be other people, that in that life that person would fly from city to city, would spend his days having his every need fulfilled, working in which he was treated like the potentate of a small, corrupt country? Wasn't it a miracle to be adopted at thirty, to find people who loved you so much that they wanted to call you their own? Wasn't it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable?Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn't this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle?

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curain to have my children near—that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams. I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due—that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep. Sometimes we come to gratitute too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.

A Parting Guest What delightful hosts are they— Life and Love! Lingeringly I turn away, This late hour, yet glad enough They have not withheld from me Their high hospitality. So, with face lit with delight And all gratitude, I stay Yet to press their hands and say, Thanks.—So fine a time! Good night.

Are you okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.” “Just don’t like hospitals,” he says. “I’m fine.” “You don’t have to stay.” He takes my hands, holds them between our chests. “I’m not leaving you here.” “I can handle it.” His mouth shrinks, the crease beneath it deepening. “I know. I want to be here.

They looked like frogs who’d been kissed and kissed roughly, yet stayed frogs.

Look I accept Adam because you love him. And I assume he accepts me because you love me...your love binds us.'...The funny thing was, I never really bought into Kim's notion that they were somehow bound together through me- until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor.

Fine but I don’t care who offers you hospitality with their women, you say no. There is no what happens on the road stays on the road with us.” I let my expression tell him how serious I am about this.

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.   Boys

I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn’t love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Do you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through.

What to say? That I would have loved to make the trip but was busy staying out of the mental hospital? It’s so humiliating—so degrading. If I knew I wouldn’t get caught, I’d love to lie about it—invent an acceptable cancer, that recurs and vanishes, that people could understand—that wouldn’t make them frightened and uncomfortable.

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house. I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped.

In hospitality, people vacation where you live. And so when I stay home from work it’s like a double vacation.

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags.

As I’ve said, for the entire stay in those hospitals, I was never left alone—not once. So, there is light in the darkness. It’s there—you just have to look hard enough for it.

Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence. 'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?' 'Yes. I wrote "Cocktail Time"' 'You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?' Cosmo said he had no wife. 'Surely?' "I'm a bachelor.' Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,' murmured Mr Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. 'I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?' 'No.' 'Sleep does. It knits the ravelled sleave of care.' (After a period of engrossed knitting, Cosmo coughs loudly to draw attention to his presence.) 'Goodness, you made me jump!' he (Saxby) said. 'Who are you?' 'My name, as I have already told you, is Wisdom' 'How did you get in?' asked Mr Saxby with a show of interest. 'I was shown in.' 'And stayed in. I see, Tennyson was right. Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. Take a chair.' 'I have.' 'Take another,' said Mr Saxby hospitably.

It's this or a short hospital stay," she said, greeting Scarlett with a raised glass of a deep red liquid with a celery stalk sticking out of the top. "Bloody Marys are one of the truly medicinal cocktails. The only way I can beat this jet lag is by staying up all day, and this is going to keep me alive. And who is this?" This was directed at Marlene, who was stalking along behind Scarlett like a wet cat.

In hospital they ask you to rate your discomfort on a scale of ten. I guess it’s the best they can come up with, but it fails to capture the nature of the beast. Pain can stay the same while you change around it. And, like a thumb of constant size, what it blocks out depends on how close it gets to you. At arm’s length a thumb obscures a small fragment of the day. Held close enough to your eye it can blind you to everything that matters, relegating the world to a periphery.

I once lay in a hospital myself praying to keep myself alive and I’ve lain on several grounds too and I know for a fact it’s not very different praying to get to stay alive and praying to want to stay alive.

Contentedness is a party I leave early ever time. It's not often that I feel invited to begin with, and even rarer that I feel welcomed enough to stay. I've learned to never test any group's hospitality. Patience like that is finite for someone like me, and it's dangerous to indulge in it.

There are times, beloved, when God will place you in the middle of trials—a hospital stay, rejection, a financial blow. He lets you hurt as others hurt, knowing that the way you handle it will be a testimony, that your response will show others that there’s something awesomely different about you.

In going back and thinking about my friendships and hearing about other women's, I see this: Our friends are not our second choices. They are our dates for Friday nights and for ex-boyfriends' weddings. They are the visitors to our hometowns and hospital rooms. They are the first people we tell about any news, whether it's good, terrible, or mundane. They are our plus ones at office parties. They are the people we're raising children with. They are our advocates, who, no matter what, make us feel like we won't fail. They are the people who will struggle with us and who will stay with us. They are who we text when we get home.

But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them. And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view.

Pherae. He was Ortilochus’ son, whose father was Alpheus, and there they spent the night. [490] Diocles offered them the hospitality he owed to strangers who stayed there as his guests. As soon as rose-fingered early Dawn appeared, they hitched their horses, climbed in the splendid chariot, and set off from the echoing portico

Persons Are Turned against Themselves Evil also turns a person against herself so that self is used against self. The case of the woman who received a dismissal letter from her pastor comes to mind again. The psychological decompensation she suffered was successfully used by her husband to intercede with a psychiatrist of his choosing to commit her to the mental unit of a hospital for an extended involuntary stay, which further worsened her condition. Additional examples abound. Some patients report cults using induced hypnotic states to encourage a subject's dissociated hands and arms to do something hurtful to someone else. In such cases, the subject is encouraged to watch the hand that is hers but not hers (because it is dissociated from her). The end result is often extreme guilt. self-loathing, and distrust of one's self and motives.An incestuous parent may use a child's own natural bodily responses to repeated sexual stimulation to make the point that the child really "wants and enjoys“ what is being forced upon her.

Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, ‘Why are you doing again? You’ll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,’ that had been her farewell to him that morning. Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay.

I should be arguing vehemently with doctors, demanding results, I should be surrounded by people who are bleeding and screaming and shocking one another with defibrillators.

I never really bought in Kim's notion that they were somehow bound together through me- until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor.

Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, ‘Entertain me.

Grabbing the doorknob, he twists, breaking the lock and shoving the door open. I’m just stepping off Trixie Skillz when I notice the hazy glow of an oil-lamp coming from inside, the flame turned way down low. Reclining on the couch next to it is an old woman, her white hair cropped close to her head, her spectacles perched low on her nose. She peers over them at us, the book in her hands entirely forgotten. We crashed the house of someone’s grandma. Just when I thought we were fresh out of horrors, another one comes. “We have nothing of any value, I assure you,” she says, her voice surprisingly steady for someone who thinks their home is being invaded. “I am not here for your things,” Pestilence says. “I am here for your hospitality.” The woman squints curiously at the horseman. Setting her book aside, she rises to her feet. Age has made her soft and plump, but there’s a certain quiet strength to her. “Ruth,” a thin, raspy voice calls from another room in the house, “who’s at the door?” Did he miss the part where we broke into their home? Ruth’s gaze stays on Pestilence for a long time, moving from his bow and quiver to his crown, before settling on his face. “I believe it’s one of the Four Horsemen, dear.” Her eyes flick to me. “And he’s brought with him a lady friend.

Oh!" said Moominmamma with a start, "I believe those were mice disappearing into the cellar. Sniff, run down with a little milk for them." Then she caught sight of the suitcase which stood by the steps. "Luggage too," thought Moominmamma. "Dear me -- then they've come to stay." And she went off to look for Moominpappa to ask him to put up two more beds -- very, very small ones.

He’s in the hospital with this flu bug. Captain Trips, they’re calling it out here. Not that it’s any laughing matter. A lot of people have died with it, they say. People are scared, staying in.

As our focus on Unreasonable Hospitality grew, we were always looking for a way to “plus one” the experience—to give people a little more than they expected—by staying alert to recurring situations.

V smiled, his eyes a little shiny as if he too were choked up. "Don't worry, I'm covered. So, I guess you're back, true?" "And ready to rock and roll." "Really." "For sure. I'm thinking about a future in contracting. Wanted to see how this bathroom was put together. Excellent tile work. You should check it." "How about I carry you back to bed?" "I want to look at the sink pipes next." Respect and affection clearly drove V's cool smirk. "At least let me help you up." "Nah, I can do it." With a groan, Butch gave the vertical move a shot, but then eased back down onto the tile. Turned out his head was a little overwhelming. But if they left him here long enough-a week, maybe ten days? "Come on, cop. Cry uncle here and let me help." Butch was suddenly too tired to front. As he went totally limp, he was aware of Marissa staring at him and thought, man, could he look any weaker? Shit, the only saving grace was there wasn't a cold breeze on his butt. Which suggested the hospital gown had stayed closed. Thank you, God.

Thus in South Africa it is very expensive to be poor. It is the poor people who stay furthest from town and therefore have to spend more money on transport to come and work for white people; it is the poor people who use uneconomic and inconvenient fuel like paraffin and coal because of the refusal of the white man to install electricity in black areas; it is the poor people who are governed by many ill-defined restrictive laws and therefore have to spend money on fines for 'technical' offences; it is the poor people who have no hospitals and are therefore exposed to exorbitant charges by private doctors; it is the poor people who use untarred roads, have to walk long distances, and therefore experience the greatest wear and tear on commodities like shoes; it is the poor people who have to pay for their children's books while whites get them free.

The way I see it, since you’re staying here, it’s only right for me to be hospitable. So if I get you a sandwich, don’t feel like you have to make it up to me. It’s just a sandwich.” She said nothing, but he was wrong. It wasn’t just a sandwich. It was more than that to her. “And I appreciate the offer to help with my laundry. Thanks, Haven.

After the second of two hospital stays following a difficult time, I went to a program for those whose lives have fallen apart. Often someone would say—weeping, shaking, or dry eyed—that he or she wished to go back in time and make everything right again. I wished, too, that life could be reset, but reset from when? From each point I could go to an earlier point: warning signs neglected, mistakes aggregated, but it was useless to do so, as I often ended up with the violent wish that I had never been born. I was quiet most of the time, until I was told I was evasive and not making progress. But my pain was my private matter, I thought; if I could understand and articulate my problems I wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Do you want to share anything, I was prompted when I had little to offer. By then I felt my hope had run out. I saw the revolving door admitting new people and letting old people out into the world; similar stories were told with the same remorse and despair; the lectures were on the third repeat. What if I were stuck forever in that basement room? I broke down and could feel a collective sigh: my tears seemed to prove that finally I intended to cooperate. I had only wanted to stay invisible, but there as elsewhere invisibility is a luxury.

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

I will say it again," said Dumbledore as the phoenix rose into the air and resettled itself upon the perch beside the door. "You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you tonight. Harry. You have shown bravery equal to those who died fighting Voldemort at the height of his powers. You have shouldered a grown wizard's burden and found yourself equal to it - and you have now given us all we have a right to expect. You will come with me to the hospital wing. I do not want you returning to the dormitory tonight. A Sleeping Potion, and some peace . . . Sirius, would you like to stay with him?" Sirius nodded and stood up. He transformed back into the great black dog and walked with Harry and Dumbledore out of the office, accompanying them down a flight of stairs to the hospital wing. When Dumbledore pushed open the door. Harry saw Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Ron, and Hermione grouped around a harassed-looking Madam Pomfrey. They appeared to be demanding to know where Harry was and what had happened to him. All of them whipped around as Harry, Dumbledore, and the black dog entered, and Mrs. Weasley let out a kind of muffled scream. "Harry! Oh Harry!" She started to hurry toward him, but Dumbledore moved between them. "Molly," he said, holding up a hand, "please listen to me for a moment. Harry has been through a terrible ordeal tonight. He has just had to relive it for me.What he needs now is sleep, and peace, and quiet. If he would like you all to stay with him," he added, looking around at Ron, Hermione, and Bill too, "you may do so. But I do not want you questioning him until he is ready to answer, and certainly not this evening." Mrs. Weasley nodded. She was very white. She rounded on Ron, Hermione, and Bill as though they were being noisy, and hissed, "Did you hear? He needs quiet!

I began to consider, upon the thought of "permanently" relocating, everything New York had made me. When I arrived, I was like a half-carved sculpture, my personality still and undefined image. But the city wears you down, chisels away at everything you don't need, streamlines your emotions and character until you are hard cut, fully defined, and perfect like a Rodin sculpture. That is something truly wonderful, the kind of self-crystallyzation not available in any other city. But then, if you stay too long, it keeps on wearing you down, chipping away at traits you cherish, character that you've earned. Stay forever, and it will grind you down to nothing.

Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel.

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital.

Marie refuses to describe herself as "cured." She feels such a label ignores the process of getting and staying healthy. 'When I was released from Sutton State Hospital, I didn't come out 'well.' It was a process of getting well. In my first years out, I would sometimes have to sit rigidly by the door, stuck in my anxiety, disconnected from my feelings. I still had to learn that I couldn't demand love and attention - I have to learn to exchange feelings.' (xiii)

I remember one day - the day I had to leave after a month here alone. I had just had lunch in some small tratoria on the remotest part of the Fondamente Nuove, grilled fish and half a bottle of wine. With that inside, I set out for the place I was staying, to collect my bags and catch a vaporetto. I walked a quarter of a mile along the Fondamente Nuove, a small moving dot in that gigantic watercolor, and then turned right by the hospital of Giovanni e Paolo. The day was warm, sunny, the sky blue, all lovely. And with my back to the Fondamente and San Michele, hugging the wall of the hospital, almost rubbing it with my left shoulder and squinting at the sun, I suddenly felt : I am a cat. A cat that has just had a fish. Had anyone addressed me at that moment, I would have meowed. I was absolutely, animally happy. Twelve hours later, of course, having landed in New York, I hit the worst possible mess in my life - or the one that appeared that way at the time. Yet the cat in me lingered; had it not been for the cat, I'd be climbing the walls now in some expensive institution.

Never ever defend your work. This is a story about love, you know that. This is a story of a man who has been tortured every day of his life for things he did in the war. This is the story of a wife who stayed with him, because most wives did in that generation, and she comes to her daughter’s hospital room and talks compulsively about everyone’s marriage going bad, she doesn’t even know it, doesn’t even know that’s what she’s doing. This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. But if you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You’re not doing it right.

I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them

New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private, for-profit health care "soulless vampire bastards making money off human pain." Now, I know what you're thinking: "But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism." Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species, but we don't try to fuck everything. It wasn't that long ago when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle, and you were done. The bill was $1.50; plus, you got to keep the thermometer. But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some bean counter decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. The more people who get sick, and stay sick, the higher their profit margins, which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O. Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries were they live longer than us? Oh, it's hardly worth it, they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom. The problem with President Obama's health-care plan isn't socialism. It's capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross Blue Shield. And it's not just medicine--prisons also used to be a nonprofit business, and for good reason--who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you're going to have trouble with the tenants. It's not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed. There used to be some things we just didn't do for money. Did you know, for example, there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? FDR said he didn't want World War II to create one millionaire, but I'm guessing Iraq has made more than a few executives at Halliburton into millionaires. Halliburton sold soldiers soda for $7.50 a can. They were honoring 9/11 by charging like 7-Eleven. Which is wrong. We're Americans; we don't fight wars for money. We fight them for oil. And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was nonprofit: TV news. I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. And I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.

For hours after the three consecutive calls—and after the predictable banality and futility of the pep talk, after the attempt to revive the old esprit by reviving memories of his colleagues' lives, by trying to find things to say to buck up the hopeless and bring them back from the brink—what he wanted to do was not only to phone and speak to his daughter, whom he found in the hospital with Phoebe, but to revive his own esprit by phoning and talking to his mother and father. Yet what he'd learned was nothing when measured against the inevitable onslaught that is the end of life. Had he been aware of the mortal suffering of every man and woman he happened to have known during all his years of professional life, of each one's painful story of regret and loss and stoicism, of fear and panic and isolation and dread, had he learned of every last thing they had parted with that had once been vitally theirs and of how, systematically, they were being destroyed, he would have had to stay on the phone through the day and into the night, making another hundred calls at least. Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

There is something cathartic about what has happened to me during this stay in hospital. I’ve heard others say that coming face to face with your own mortality can have this effect. You look with harsh, savage eyes at the life you are living and resolve to make the best of the time you have left, if you can be allowed the luxury of a few extra years to fulfill your plans. Around me, I see an urgency creep into the lives of friends once they have an AIDS diagnosis: they rush out and try to complete as many life projects as they can, before their health deteriorates.

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn’t help thinking about Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe” because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me—fear that I’d be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I’d be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away. Michael’s shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. “What?” “You’re frowning.” “Am I supposed to be smiling right now?” He faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. “No, but you look like you’re about to bolt at any second.” I watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. “I’m fine.” “Hard ass.” A tiny smirk touched my lips. “Stop thinking about my butt. You’re an archangel.” He grinned, but didn’t reply.

She felt tears suddenly gather in her eyes and laughed harshly. ‘I hate bloody hospitals.’ Her visitor stayed still and silent, bringing fresh fear to her overactive mind. ‘Sorry about the waterworks. I’m OK now. Look, just give me the facts. Life-threatening? Life-changing? I take it you know I work here, that I’m a doctor, so please don’t give me the diluted version. I’d rather know the truth.

The avengers outside are the worst kind, the ones in silver cross necklaces, baseball caps, and Life is Good T-shirts. The ones who stay up until midnight to build their first-graders’ Alamo projects out of sugar cubes, cancel a Thanksgiving cruise to bring Grandma some turkey in the hospital, spend a full paycheck on ACL surgery for the family dog. Their love for God and family is just as manic as their hate.

We have imagined that a white hospital train with a white Diesel engine has taken you through many a tunnel to a mountainous country by the sea. You are getting well there. But you cannot write because your fingers are so very weak. Moonbeams cannot hold even a white pencil. The picture is pretty, but how long can it stay on the screen? We expect the next slide, but the magic-lantern man has none left. Shall we let the theme of a long separation expand till it breaks into tears? Shall we say (daintily handling the disinfected white symbols) that the train is Death and the nursing home Paradise? Or shall we leave the picture to fade by itself, to mingle with other fading impressions? But we want to write letters to you even if you cannot answer. Shall we suffer the slow wobbly scrawl (we can manage our name and two or three words of greeting) to work its conscientious and unnecessary way across a post card which will never be mailed? Are not these problems so hard to solve because my own mind is not made up yet in regard to your death? My intelligence does not accept the transformation of physical discontinuity into the permanent continuity of a nonphysical element escaping the obvious law, nor can it accept the inanity of accumulating incalculable treasures of thought and sensation, and thought-behind-thought and sensation-behind-sensation, to lose them all at once and forever in a fit of black nausea followed by infinite nothingness. Unquote.

The breakdown of the neighborhoods also meant the end of what was essentially an extended family....With the breakdown of the extended family, too much pressure was put on the single family. Mom had no one to stay with Granny, who couldn't be depended on to set the house on fire while Mom was off grocery shopping. The people in the neighborhood weren't there to keep an idle eye out for the fourteen-year-old kid who was the local idiot, and treated with affection as well as tormented....So we came up with the idea of putting everybody in separate places. We lock them up in prisons, mental hospitals, geriatric housing projects, old-age homes, nursery schools, cheap suburbs that keep women and the kids of f the streets, expensive suburbs where everybody has their own yard and a front lawn that is tended by a gardener so all the front lawns look alike and nobody uses them anyway....the faster we lock them up, the higher up goes the crime rate, the suicide rate, the rate of mental breakdown. The way it's going, there'll be more of them than us pretty soon. Then you'll have to start asking questions about the percentage of the population that's not locked up, those that claim that the other fifty-five per cent is crazy, criminal, or senile. WE have to find some other way....So I started imagining....Suppose we built houses in a circle, or a square, or whatever, connected houses of varying sizes, but beautiful, simple. And outside, behind the houses, all the space usually given over to front and back lawns, would be common too. And there could be vegetable gardens, and fields and woods for the kids to play in. There's be problems about somebody picking the tomatoes somebody else planted, or the roses, or the kids trampling through the pea patch, but the fifty groups or individuals who lived in the houses would have complete charge and complete responsibility for what went on in their little enclave. At the other side of the houses, facing the, would be a little community center. It would have a community laundry -- why does everybody have to own a washing machine?-- and some playrooms and a little cafe and a communal kitchen. The cafe would be an outdoor one, with sliding glass panels to close it in in winter, like the ones in Paris. This wouldn't be a full commune: everybody would have their own way of earning a living, everybody would retain their own income, and the dwellings would be priced according to size. Each would have a little kitchen, in case people wanted to eat alone, a good-sized living space, but not enormous, because the community center would be there. Maybe the community center would be beautiful, lush even. With playrooms for the kids and the adults, and sitting rooms with books. But everyone in the community, from the smallest walking child, would have a job in it.

His mom realized, of course, that her son was shouting out of fear and concern, so she replied the way she often did: “Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.” Jack said something he instantly regretted: “Do you think God’s going to protect you against knives just because you’re a priest?” She may have been sitting in a hospital on the other side of the world, but she could still feel his bottomless terror. So her whispers were half washed away by tears when she replied: “God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.” It was impossible to argue with such a stubborn woman. Jack hated how much he admired her sometimes. Jim, in turn, loved her so much he could hardly breathe. But she didn’t travel so much after that, and never went so far away again. Then she got sick, and they lost her, and the world lost a bit more of its protection.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

There are simply no doctors and nurses left on that continent. It’s an absolute tragedy! African doctors should stay in Africa.” “Why shouldn’t they want to practice where there is regular electricity and regular pay?” Mark asked, his tone flat. Obinze sensed that he did not like Alexa at all. “I’m from Grimsby and I certainly don’t want to work in a district hospital there.” “But it isn’t quite the same thing, is it? We’re speaking of some of the world’s poorest people. The doctors have a responsibility as Africans,” Alexa said. “Life isn’t fair, really. If they have the privilege of that medical degree then it comes with a responsibility to help their people.” “I see. I don’t suppose any of us should have that responsibility for the blighted towns in the north of England?” Mark said. Alexa’s face reddened. In

he’s not real I can take his space. As I get into bed beside him, the strongman vanishes. I pick up my diary and record him: was there, isn’t any more. This happened in early July, 2010. I had surgery on the first of the month, and was scheduled to stay in hospital for about nine days. The last thing the surgeon said to me, on the afternoon of the procedure: ‘For you, this is a big thing, but remember, to us it is routine.’ The operation was to relieve a stricture in my bowel, before it closed completely and created an emergency. But though we had used the latest scans in preparation, neither

The symmetry of it all, or was it the emptied, seemingly ransacked neatness of his room, tied a knot in my throat. It reminded me less of a hotel room when you wait for the porter to help you take your things downstairs after a glorious stay that was ending too soon, than of a hospital room after all your belongings have been packed away, while the next patient, who hasn't been admitted yet, still waits in the emergency room exactly as you waited there yourself a week earlier. This was a test run for our final separation. Like looking at someone on a respirator before it's finally turned off days later.

Like many fellow travelers who’ve crossed the Styx and returned, I view the itinerary as transformational. On the one hand, I won’t join that cohort claiming gratitude for their time in hell; on the other, I can say that in the wake of my depression, I’m pierced by other people as I wasn’t before, that I waste less time entertaining myself, and that I hear my thoughts with a useful attention to their tenor, fairness, and sanity. I feel equanimous most of the time, and have a strong impulse to give. My life has become, if you will, intentional, in a way it might not be if I hadn’t made my plummet. William Styron died in 2006. During the last third of his life, after the publication of Darkness Visible, he became a mental health advocate. I’m among those aided by his account, who found in it succor, but I’m also mindful of complaints such as those in Joel P. Smith’s essay “Depression: Darker Than Darkness”—that Styron was depressed for months, not years; that he was never alone; that he had the best of treatment; that he stayed in a hospital “as comfortable as they come”; and that he didn’t have to rely on radical remedies like electroshock therapy: all of this to say that Styron didn’t plumb the depths and can’t represent the depressed, and neither can I. Others have and have had it worse. For them, depression never yields or lessens. For them there’s no rising into the light of day, no edifications, and no gains, nothing but the wish to be dead, which is, after a marathon of untenable suffering, granted. “E

A passerby discovered a toddler sitting on the chilly concrete on an alley, playing with the wrapper of a cat food container. By the time she was brought to the hospital, her limbs were blue with cold. She was a wizened little thing, too thin, made of sticks. She knew only one word, her name. Wren. As she grew, her skin retained a slight bluish cast, resembling skimmed milk. Her foster parents bundled her up in jackets and coats and mittens and gloves, but unlike her sister, she was never cold. Her lip colour changed like a mood ring, staying bluish and purple even in summer, turning pink only when close to a fire. And she could play in the snow for hours, constructing elaborate tunnels and mock-fighting with icicles, coming inside only when called. Although she appeared bony and anaemic, she was strong. By the time she was eight, she could lift bags of groceries that her adoptive mother struggled with. By the time she was nine, she was gone.

I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement.

Okay? It's okay! Don't worry about it! Just chill out! You don't have to feel like you're suffering just because your life is unfortunate, you don't have to sulk just because your life hasn't been blessed! What's wrong with staying positive in the face of adversity? You know what? What you're going to do after this is go home looking like nothing ever happened! Live the same old life with your father and mother who are out of the hospital now! You'll never be able to reconcile with either of them, I guarantee that! Even if you somehow beat the odds and become happy someday, it's not going to matter, because no matter how happy you are, it's never going to erase your crappy past! You can't pretend it never happened, you're going to be dragging it around with you! No matter what you do, no matter what happens, that misfortune is going to sit in your heart forever! You'll remember it just when you think you forgot, you'll dream about it for the rest of your life! We are going to have nightmares for the rest of our lives! That's how it's going to be-and since there's nothing you can do about it, don't try to look away! Playing a prank on some random passerby, playing streaker in your underwear is just going to take a tiny bit of stress off your mind, in reality it's not going to change a thing!

Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled. Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border. It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world. But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence. Regulations like these were part of our daily life, but they never failed to infuriate me. One day I was seized by an absolute compulsion to get out. I faked illness and got permission to go to a hospital in the middle of the city. I wandered the streets desperately trying to spot the sea, without success. The local people were unhelpful: they did not like non-Cantonese speakers, and refused to understand me. We stayed in the port for three weeks, and only once were we allowed, as a special treat, to go to an island to see the ocean. As the point of being there was to talk to the sailors, we were organized into small groups to take turns working in the two places they were allowed to frequent: the Friendship Store, which sold goods for hard currency, and the Sailors' Club, which had a bar, a restaurant, a billiards room, and a ping-pong room. There were strict rules about how we could talk to the sailors. We were not allowed to speak to them alone, except for brief exchanges over the counter of the Friendship Store. If we were asked our names and addresses, under no circumstances were we to give our real ones. We all prepared a false name and a nonexistent address. After every conversation, we had to write a detailed report of what had been said which was standard practice for anyone who had contact with foreigners. We were warned over and over again about the importance of observing 'discipline in foreign contacts' (she waifi-lu). Otherwise, we were told, not only would we get into serious trouble, other students would be banned from coming.

At the nurses’ station the night-shift RNs cluster on chairs, looking like birds wanting to shove their tired heads under a free wing. Their lined faces and heavy-lidded eyes show how hard it is to stay awake and alert for an entire night. I don’t work a lot of nights, but when I do I feel it. I hit a wall at 2:00 a.m., then again at 4:00. The hospital’s strong tea, bad coffee, Diet Coke from the vending machine—they all help, but nothing non-pharmaceutical will really make me feel awake for the entire night, and I’m not going down the pharmacologic road. The day after, even if I sleep all morning and afternoon, it feels as though I’m seeing the world through gauze.

The hospital was poorly equipped and filthy. To use the bathroom I had to get up and cross an open courtyard to reach the outhouse. At first I was too weak to stand. But once I was well enough to walk to the bathroom, I discovered that the hospital used the courtyard to store the dead. The whole time I was staying there, several bodies were stacked like wood between my room and the outhouse. Even more horrible were the rats that feasted on them day and night. It was the most terrible sight I have ever seen. The first thing the rats eat are the eyes, because that is the softest part of a body. I can still see those hollow red eyes. They come to me in my nightmares and I wake up screaming.

Yes,” I say more forcefully. Everyone is drawing away from me — Gale, Cressida, the insects — giving me the stage. But I stay focused on the red light. “I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I’m right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors.” The shock I’ve been feeling begins to give way to fury. “I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there’s a cease-fire, you’re deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.” My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. “This is what they do! And we must fight back!

Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive people. Well, Schacht will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Schacht is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Schacht are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Schacht. He’s a child and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashings and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Schacht should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Schacht I’m the trueblue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.

What I saw of military life left me humbled. As long as I’d been alive, I’d never encountered the kind of fortitude and loyalty that I found in those rooms. One day in San Antonio, Texas, I noticed a minor commotion in the hallway of the military hospital I was visiting. Nurses shuffled urgently in and out of the room I was about to enter. “He won’t stay in bed,” I heard someone whisper. Inside, I found a broad-shouldered young man from rural Texas who had multiple injuries and whose body had been severely burned. He was in clear agony, tearing off the bedsheets and trying to slide his feet to the floor. It took us all a minute to understand what he was doing. Despite his pain, he was trying to stand up and salute the wife of his commander in chief.

It was never the intention of England or France or Portugal, or any of the colonial powers, to raise the colonial people to their level. No matter what they say now about highways and hospitals and penicillin, whatever was done in those colonies was not done for the natives. And the Belgians may not know this, but the natives do. What happened was very simple. You cannot walk into a country and stay there as long as the Europeans did and dig coal and iron and gold out of the earth and use it for yourself. Put all the natives in one place and have them working for you, and have a European sector where only Europeans live. By and by, it’s inevitable that someone will make a connection between the machines you have and the power you have. And from there, it’s just a matter of detail. Now the details can be bloody, or they can be less so; they will in any case be difficult. We in this country now—and it really is one minute to twelve—can really turn the tide because we have an advantage that Europe does not have, and we have an advantage that Africa does not have, if we could face it. Black and white people have lived together here for generations, and now for centuries. Now, on whether or not we face these facts everything depends. (1961)

I hate that phrase "the real world." Why is an aircraft factory more real than a university? Is it? In universities I've had in my office ex-cons on parole, young people in tears racked with deep sexual problems, people recently released from mental hospitals, confused, bewildered, frightened, hoping, with more desperation than some of us will ever be unlucky enough to know, that they will remain stable enough to stay in school, and out of hospitals forever. I've seen people so lovelorn that I've sat there praying as only an unreligious man can pray that I don't say something wrong, that I can spare their feelings, that I might even say something that will make their lives easier if only for a few moments. Sad drug addicts too. Not people you usually meet in industrial offices. . . In some ways the university is a far more real world than business.

His wings burned and he felt ashamed. This life in Italy had been a dark and ugly death for her. One of the worst. He would never stop blaming himself for the horrible way she had passed out of this life. But that was years after where Daniel stood today. This was the hospital where they'd first met, when Lucia was so young and lovely, innocent and saucy in the same breath. Here she had loved him instantly and completely. Though she was too young for Daniel to show he loved her back,he had never discouraged her affection. She used to slip her hand inside his when they strolled under the orange trees on the Piazza della Repubblica,but when he squeezed her hand,she would blush.It always made him laugh,the way she could be so bold, then suddenly turn shy.She used to tell him that she wanted to marry him someday. "You're back!" Daniel spun around. He hadn't heard the door behind him opening. Lucia jumped when she saw him. She was beaming, showing a perfect row of tiny white teeth. Her beauty took his breath away. What did she mean,he was back? Ah, this was when he'd hidden from Luce,frightened of killing her by accident. He was not allowed to reveal anything to her; she had to discover the details for herself. Was he even to hint broadly,she would simply combust. Had he stayed,she might have grilled him and perhaps forced the truth out of him...He didn't dare.

Whoever has been poor and lonely himself understands other poor and lonely people all the better. At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death. One day Frau Wilke whispered, as she stretched out her hand and arm to me: "Hold my hand. It's like ice." I took her poor, old, thin hand in mine. It was cold as ice. Frau Wilke crept about her home now like a ghost. Nobody visited her. For days she sat alone in her unheated room. To be alone: icy, iron terror, foretaste of the grave, forerunner of unpitying death. Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another's loneliness strange. I began to realize that Frau Wilke had nothing to eat. The lady who owned the house, and later took Frau Wilke's rooms, allowing me to stay in mine, brought, of course in pity for her forsaken state, every midday and evening a cup of broth, but not for long, and so Frau Wilke faded away. She lay there, no longer moving: and soon she was taken to the city hospital, where, after three days, she died. One afternoon soon after her death, I entered her empty room, into which the good evening sun was shining, gladdening it with rose-bright, gay and soft colors. There I saw on the bed the things which the poor lady had till recently worn.... The strange sight of them made me unspeakably sad, and my peculiar state of mind made it seem to me almost that I had died myself, and life in all its fullness, which had often appeared so huge and beautiful, was thin and poor to the point of breaking. All things past, all things vanishing away, were more close to me than ever. For a long time I looked at Frau Wilke's possessions, which now had lost their mistress and lost all purpose, and at the golden room, gloried by the smile of the evening sun, while I stood there motionless, not understanding anything anymore.

Last year we stepped onto an elevator. We politely asked the white lady behind us If she could please take the next lift To continue social distancing. Her face flared up like a cross in the night. Are you kidding me? she yelled, Like we'd just declared Elevators for us only Or Yous must enter from the back Or No yous or dogs allowed Or We have the right to refuse Humanity to anyone Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood. Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us. It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior. Meanwhile, for generations we've stayed home, [segre] gated, kept out of parks, kept out of playgrounds, kept out of pools, kept out of public spaces, kept out of outside spaces, kept out of outer space, kept out of movie theaters, kept out of malls, kept out of restrooms, kept out of restaurants, kept out of taxis, kept out of buses, kept out of beaches, kept out of ballot boxes, kept out of office, kept out of the army, kept out of the hospitals, kept out of hotels, kept out of clubs, kept out of jobs, kept out of schools, kept out of sports, kept out of streets, kept out of water, kept out of land, kept out of kept in kept from kept behind kept below kept down kept without life. Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.

Bree rubbed her belly. Figured; Alessandro wasn’t one to live in quiet but strained tension. She stared up at the fabric of the canopy and then squeezed her eyes shut. “Alessandro, considering that the outside world has the sterile hospital rooms, not to mention the epidurals, yeah. For goodness sake, Alessandro. You know we can’t stay here forever. I’m entering my eighth month here.” “I must say, I’m surprised you’re so anxious to leave.” “Why?” Bree asked, turning to look at his strong profile. “You know why, Brianna. As soon as we walk out that door, you and I are over.” Bree felt a guilty tightening in her chest. “Perhaps that’s what you want, though.” “That’s not fair,” Bree whispered even as she feared he was right. No. He’s wrong. I love him. She wasn’t going to let anyone shake what she and Alessandro had built here. She’d let her family know that she wanted Alessandro in her life and that she wanted to be a family with him. “Thanks for your confidence in me, though. Really.

He pictured himself at the lake, on a houseboat. Dekka would be there, and Brianna and Jack. He would have friends. He wouldn’t be alone. But he couldn’t stop himself from looking for her. She no longer had Little Pete to worry about. They could be together without all of that. But of course he knew Astrid, and knew that right now, wherever she was, she was eaten up inside with guilt. “She’s not coming, is she?” Sam said to Dekka. But Dekka didn’t answer. She was somewhere else in her head. Sam saw her glance and look away as Brianna laid a light hand on Jack’s shoulder. Dahra was staying in the hospital, but a few more kids came. Groups of three or four at a time. The Siren and the kids she lived with came. John Terrafino came. Ellen. He waited. He would wait the full two hours. Not for her, he told himself, just to keep his word. Then Orc, with Howard. Sam groaned inwardly. “You gotta be kidding me,” Brianna said. “The deal was kids make a choice,” Sam said. “I think Howard just realized how dangerous life can be for a criminal living in a place where the ‘king’ can decide life or death.

The great majority of those who, like Frankl, were liberated from Nazi concentration camps chose to leave for other countries rather than return to their former homes, where far too many neighbors had turned murderous. But Viktor Frankl chose to stay in his native Vienna after being freed and became head of neurology at a main hospital in Vienna. The Austrians he lived among often perplexed Frankl by saying they did not know a thing about the horrors of the camps he had barely survived. For Frankl, though, this alibi seemed flimsy. These people, he felt, had chosen not to know. Another survivor of the Nazis, the social psychologist Ervin Staub, was saved from a certain death by Raoul Wallenberg, the diplomat who made Swedish passports for thousands of desperate Hungarians, keeping them safe from the Nazis. Staub studied cruelty and hatred, and he found one of the roots of such evil to be the turning away, choosing not to see or know, of bystanders. That not-knowing was read by perpetrators as a tacit approval. But if instead witnesses spoke up in protest of evil, Staub saw, it made such acts more difficult for the evildoers. For Frankl, the “not-knowing” he encountered in postwar Vienna was regarding the Nazi death camps scattered throughout that short-lived empire, and the obliviousness of Viennese citizens to the fate of their own neighbors who were imprisoned and died in those camps. The underlying motive for not-knowing, he points out, is to escape any sense of responsibility or guilt for those crimes. People in general, he saw, had been encouraged by their authoritarian rulers not to know—a fact of life today as well. That same plea of innocence, I had no idea, has contemporary resonance in the emergence of an intergenerational tension. Young people around the world are angry at older generations for leaving as a legacy to them a ruined planet, one where the momentum of environmental destruction will go on for decades, if not centuries. This environmental not-knowing has gone on for centuries, since the Industrial Revolution. Since then we have seen the invention of countless manufacturing platforms and processes, most all of which came to be in an era when we had no idea of their ecological impacts. Advances in science and technology are making ecological impacts more transparent, and so creating options that address the climate crisis and, hopefully, will be pursued across the globe and over generations. Such disruptive, truly “green” alternatives are one way to lessen the bleakness of Earth 2.0—the planet in future decades—a compelling fact of life for today’s young. Were Frankl with us today (he died in 1997), he would no doubt be pleased that so many of today’s younger people are choosing to know and are finding purpose and meaning in surfacing environmental facts and acting on them.

But now Max wanted Gina to look out the window. “The cavalry had arrived,” he told her. Someone was standing directly in front of the tank. Whoever he was—a boy, dressed like a surfer, on crutches—was holding one hand out in front of him like a traffic cop signaling halt. The tank, of course, had rolled to a stop. And Gina realized this was no ordinary surfer, this was Jules Cassidy. Jules was alive! And here she’d thought she was all cried out. Max laughed as he peered out through the slit that passed as a windshield for the tank. “He has no idea that we’re in here,” he said. Damn, Jules looked like he’d been hit by a bus. “Jesus, he has some balls.” Jules turned to the interpreter, who still didn’t quite believe that they weren’t going to kill him. “Open the hatch.” “Yes, sir.” He poked his head out. “Do you speak English?” Max could hear Jules through the opening. “Yes, sir.” “Tell your commanding officer to back up. In fact, tell him to leave the area. I’m in charge of this situation now. My name is Jules Cassidy and I’m an American, with the FBI. There are Marine gunships on their way, they’ll be here any minute. They have armor-penetrating artillery—they’ll blow you to hell, so back off.” “Tell him Jones wants to know if the gunships are really coming, or if that’s just something he learned in FBI Bullshitting 101.” The interpreter passed the message along. As Max watched, surprise and relief crossed Jules’s face. “Is Max in there, too?” Jules asked. “Yes, sir,” the interpreter said. “Well, shit.” Jules grinned. “I should’ve stayed in the hospital.” “I hear helicopters!” Gina’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. “I can see them, too! They’re definitely American!” Max took a deep breath, keyed the talk button. And sang. “Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go . . .

Ostap Bender lay in the dvornik's room, which was warm to the point of reeking, and mentally put the finishing touches on two possible career plans. He could become a polygamist and move peacefully from town to town, dragging behind him a new suitcase full of valuable items he'd picked up from the latest wife. Or he could go the very next day to the Stargorod Children's Commission and offer them the chance to distribute the as-yet unpainted but brilliantly conceived canvas The Bolsheviks Writing a Letter to Chamberlain, based on the artist Repin's popular painting The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan. If it worked out, this option could bring in something along the line of four hundred rubles. Ostap had thought up both options during his last stay in Moscow. The polygamy option had been born under the influence of the court report from the evening papers, where it was clearly indicated that some polygamist had only gotten two years without strict isolation. Option number two had taken shape in Bender's mind when he was going through the AARR exhibit on a free ticket. However, both options had their downsides. It was impossible to begin a career as a polygamist without a wondrous, dapple-gray suit. In addition, he needed at least ten rubles for hospitality expenses and seduction. Of course, he could get married in his green campaign uniform as well, because Bender's masculine power and attraction were absolutely irresistible to provincial, marriage-ready Margaritas; but that would be, as Bender liked to say, "Poor-quality goods. Not clean work." It wasn't all smooth sailing for the painting, either. Purely technical difficulties could arise. Would it be proper to paint Comrade Kalinin in a papakha and a white burka, or Comrade Chicherin naked to the waist?

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain. As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public. The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hed­worth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’. The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corrobo­rating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital. ~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43

So, have you been ostracized from your little crowd of devotees?” “No,” I say automatically. Then I add, “Maybe. But they aren’t my devotees.” “Please. They’re like the Cult of Four.” I can’t help but laugh. “Jealous? Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to call your very own?” One of his eyebrows twitches up. “If I was a psychopath, I would have killed you in your sleep by now.” “And added my eyeballs to your eyeball collection, no doubt.” Peter laughs too, and I realize that I am exchanging jokes and conversation with the initiate who stabbed Edward in the eye and tried to kill my girlfriend--if she’s still that. But then, he’s also the Dauntless who helped us end the attack simulation and saved Tris from a horrible death. I am not sure which actions should weigh more heavily on my mind. Maybe I should forget them all, let him begin again. “Maybe you should join my little group of hated people,” says Peter. “So far Caleb and I are the only members, but given how easy it is to get on that girl’s bad side, I’m sure our numbers will grow.” I stiffen. “You’re right, it is easy to get on her bad side. All you have to do is try to get her killed.” My stomach clenches. I almost got her killed. If she had been standing closer to the explosion, she might be like Uriah, hooked up to tubes in the hospital, her mind quiet. No wonder she doesn’t know if she wants to stay with me or not.

I reached down and squeezed his hand. "You are a good brother." He nodded. I could see in the gray light that he was crying a little. "Thanks", he said. "i kind of just want to stay here in this particular instant for a really long time." "Yeah", I said. We settled into silence and I felt the sky's bigness above me, the unimaginable vastness of it all - looking at Polaris and realizing the light I was seeing was 425 years old, and then looking at Jupiter, less than a light-hour from us. In the moonless darkness, we were just witnesses to light, and I felt a sliver of what must have driven Davis to astronomy. There was a kind of relief in having your own smallness laid bare before you, and I realized something Davis must have already known: Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out. And I knew I would remember that feeling, underneath the split-up sky, back before the machinery of fate ground us into one thing or another, back when we could still be everything. I thought, lying there, that I might love him for the rest of my life. We did love each other - maybe we never said it, and maybe love was never something we were in, but it was something I felt. I loved him, and I thought, maybe I will never see him again and I will be stuck missing him, and isn't that so terrible. But it turn out not to be terrible, because i know the secret that the me lying beneath that sky could not imagine: I know that girl would go on, that she would grow up, have children and love them, that despite loving them she would get too sick to care for them, be hospitalized, get better, and then get sick again. I know a shrink would say, write it down, how you got here. So you would, and in writing it down you realize, love is not a tragedy or a failure, but a gift. You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why. - But underneath those skies, your hand - no, my hand, no - our hand - in his, you don't know yet. You don't know that the spiral painting is in that box on your dining room table, with a Post-it note stuck to the back of the frame. You don't know that you will make a life, see it unbuilt and rebuilt.

Everyone in the delivery room was laughing at the story, including me. I never knew whether the doctor thought it was funny or not. She certainly did not join in the lightheartedness the rest of us felt. Because my doctor was also one of my bosses, I respected her and yet felt a bit intimidated by her at the same time. Jase was not intimidated at all. He was so relaxed, and that alleviated all the stress and tension I had felt since I first arrived at the hospital. True to his personality, he kept most of the room enthralled and laughing at his stories. As a lifelong hunter, he is no stranger to blood and gore. He thought the surgical process was very interesting and wanted to study everything inside of me. I’m sure his comment that my insides looked like a deer he had skinned the previous day was the first of its kind uttered during a C-section. At one point, the doctor said to him, “Jason, you have to be quiet now.” “Why?” he asked. “Because I’m getting close to the baby with this scalpel, and Missy has to stop laughing.” “Oh,” he said. “My bad.” As the doctor prepared to remove Cole, the room became quiet; I didn’t know exactly what was going on because I couldn’t see around the sheet, but I knew the time had come for our baby to be born. Jase watched everything intently. The doctor pulled on the baby, but he would not budge. In Jase’s words, “He just wouldn’t come out.” So Jase decided to lend a hand. He reached into the area near where the doctor was working, which caused every person to freeze. The room fell completely silent. As Jase recalled later, the doctor’s eyes filled with fire, and she shot him laser-sharp looks. No words were spoken, but he immediately raised his hands as if to say, “Don’t shoot,” and backed off.

I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.