Invisible Grime

Most everything is white because white means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. They wouldn’t let me leave.

“Mr. Grimes, why don’t you stay until we have the results? We can put you in a room, you’ll be quite comfortable. It shouldn’t take too long.”

The room isn’t comfortable so ask if I can walk the halls. “Just don’t go too far,” he says.

In the halls, white scrubs jostle toward me. White means clean. “Which way is the cafeteria,” I ask.

“Take the elevators down to the first floor—follow the signs.”

I’m not hungry. What I want is to see if they keep the cafeteria clean, too. Another white uniform streaks my way. “Which way are the elevators,” I ask.

She answers with a gesture I interpret to mean, down the hall and to the left. She’s in a hurry. She doesn’t even look at me. Or maybe she does, but she doesn’t see me.

Down the hall, but not yet to the left, a man mops a floor that looks as though it had just been mopped. The word Clarence is stitched on his front pocket—I wonder if that’s his name or someone else’s; he doesn’t look like a Clarence. Clarences wear thick glasses and sometimes have a mustache that crawls too far over the top lip. Next to him is a triangular sign that says, Caution! Wet Floor. Beneath the words are a graphic of someone who apparently didn’t take caution.

I turn to the left, but I misinterpreted her gesture because there are no elevators. The floor gleams as though it’s just been mopped. A heavy smell of sanitation fills my senses; I fill my lungs and wish it were that easy to clean them.

I peak into an empty room to see if they all look the same but it’s not empty; it’s being cleaned. I ask, “Excuse me, where are the elevators?”

“Not in here.”

No, they’re not. I leave and look for Clarence.

I know why they want me to stay. They know why, too. It’s like when a policeman says he’d like to ask a few questions. He already knows the answers, but he asks them anyway. Policemen and doctors have a lot in common.

I follow wet floor towards Clarence, only to find he’s mopped himself clear down the hall. “Where do they keep the elevators?” I’m impressed with the attention he pays the baseboards.

“You’re almost there. Turn here.”

“How often do you mop the floors?” I ask.

“Non-stop. When I finish here, I go up to the next. And then the next.”

“That’s all you do, all day?” I try not to sound condescending, but know I failed.

“Well, I clean the bathrooms, too.” He’s being sarcastic.

“Oh,” I say. His tone works and I feel ashamed “I noticed they were very clean.”

“It’s a hospital. That’s what we do, we clean things.”

I no longer want to inspect the cafeteria. Instead, I look up and wonder if they clean the ceilings. “Who cleans the ceilings?” I ask.

“Ceiling’s don’t get dirty,” says Clarence. “Nobody looks up, anyway.”

That’s not true; what about people being wheeled to surgery? It would be depressing if the last thing I saw before going into surgery was a dirty ceiling.

“But what about...” I start to tell him about the patients going to surgery, but decide not to. “You’re right,” I say instead. “Nobody looks up.”

I find my room again. The bed is clad in ivory white because white means clean and I sit on the sheets. I feel tired, which is why I’m here to begin with, that and the coughing.

The door pushes open and a clipboard enters followed by a doctor hiding on the other side. The clipboard clamps down on what he already knew and he pretends to read the results as if for the first time. “Mr. Grimes—”

“—Don’t say it,” I say. But he already did. He said it when he asked me to stick around. He said it when he said my name. I look through the window and think about Clarence.

It’s a hospital. That’s what we do, we clean things.

I wonder if they can clean me.