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It was the kind of Hospital room that was set up for several patient, with thick curtains surrounding each bed for at least a little privacy. The patient, a 19 year old girl who didn’t have any siblings, didn’t have her TV on because she’d been there for weeks and there was nothing left to watch. She had terminal cancer and was just waiting to die. She’d come to terms with that a few days back. Her parents had died when she was younger and she was all alone now. No friends came to visit her anymore, so she would listen to other patient’s conversations when their friends or family came to visit. It was a sort of living-vicariously-through-them situation.
Though she couldn’t see the bed across from her’s due to the curtain that the nurse had pulled across after her last visit, she knew it was a guy. His low voice was easily heard in the quiet room and she found herself enjoying his quiet, sarcastic responses to the TV shows and commercials he encountered as he flipped through. At one point he mumbled something about motel TV being better. Just wait til you try the food, she thought absently.
She noted the sound of slow footsteps entering the room and she knew the visitor wasn’t for her. It wasn’t time for the nurse’s regular visit and she hadn’t had a visitor in a long time.
“Have you ever actually watched daytime TV?” the familiar voice asked his visitor. “It’s terrible.”
