Freda arrived the day after Lisa left. She was in to have her hip replacement replaced, which is called a revision. She had fallen down the stairs and cracked one of the components, so she needed new parts. She came into the hospital a couple of days early to have some tests run prior to the surgery.
The Chinese lady in the bed next to Freda was released the day she arrived, and the following day, Elizabeth, a woman in her early 70s, was admitted. Elisabeth had a small tumor on the bottom of her lung and was in for testing to determine the composition of the tumor. She had recently lost her husband and was still grieving his loss.
A man was admitted to the bed beside me and none of us in the room learned who he was. He kept the curtains drawn around his bed the entire time.
Freda was a boisterous woman, full of piss and vinegar, as they say, and quickly became the Queen of the room.
Nearly every day, the fire alarm would sound. The doors to the rooms would be closed until the fire department had completed their check of the building. There was never any fire; it was always someone smoking in the bathroom setting off the alarm, and if it wasn’t someone at Mt. Sinai smoking in their bathroom, then it was someone in one of the other hospitals close by. Hearing fire alarms became a normal part of our day, and that wasn’t a good thing. Not only was the fire department kept busy with false alarms in this two-block radius, but both patients and staff became complacent when the alarm sounded.
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