Hospital Woes

My daily walk along the hospital

 Brings back some smoky vignettes.

A middle age pregnant woman with a black eye

Smoking on the steps of the hospital.

Driving one electric mobility scooter

In a white institutional PJ

Of a Yellow and waxy completion,

A man enjoys a smoke

On the hospital driveway.

A woman with gangrenous legs

Being pushed around smoking

Beyond the line of

No Smoking Precinct.

A man shuffling along slowly

On the hospital ramp

Surrounded by friends, all smoking,

Sitting in a wheelchair

In an hospital gown

Attached to an IV tripod

An old man is smoking

In front of the hospital.

Two staff on the hospital bench

Smoking during their break.

Ignorance, imbecility, devil may care attitude, who knows?

But what chance has a patient to quit and get better

When the staff is complacent and the system so lax?

Give your health a break, and a breath of fresh air!

I bet smoking is what got you in the hospital in the first place.

One wonders if the hospital liability towards its patients

Is covered by the sign “no smoking precinct”?

One wonders what kind of health system it represents?

For it is certainly not looking after its own personnel?

Walking on the roadside one can feel

The despair, the wretchedness, the misery,

The certain dejection of any hope sapping all energy.

The sign above the entrance door should read as in Dante’s Hell:

All who enter here lose hope.

5/1/12

©L. Bailliet