Writing

The prompt for the other day was taken from creativewritingprompts.com:

“Describe how you feel right now using your sense of smell. If you feel frustrated, write about what your frustration smells like. Use vivid words. Don’t skimp on adjectives.”

Since right now I am sitting next to my daughter’s hospital bed, I can tell you I “smell” all kinds of things – and yes, many of them are frustrating. My 7-year-old daughter has influenza and because I was unable to get her temperature down and keep it down over the past few days, my friend and medical professional at our local clinic sent us to the hospital, “toots sweet.”

I smell antiseptic, floor wax, antibacterial soap, urine and freshly laundered bedding – and while separately, each has their own distinct smell and evokes their own set of memories or emotions, the combination is sickening. Hospitals are supposed to be about healing and recovery, but because my first memory of a hospital was of my grandmother’s death when I was seven, I think I always connect that memory with the smell.

Hospitals all smell scarily similar regardless of location. I have been in several different hospitals for a variety of reasons – some of them for my own personal health – and I have never been able to get around the smell of a hospital.

I am exhausted – completely sleep deprived as I have sat up for the past three nights with my daughter as she coughed, wheezed, and barfed her way to the dehydrated point of no return. Her little veins were so shriveled from lack of fluids that it took four needle sticks, two different nurses and finally the experienced hand of a veteran anesthesiologist to tap a vein that did not collapse with a prick of a needle.

My daughter is sleeping now – her fever has subsided, broken under repeated bombings of Tylenol, Motrin, IV fluids, antibiotics and whatever else can be pushed through the needle in her arm. When I reach over to check her forehead, it is finally cool to the touch – and I can smell, although faintly, the menthol and eucalyptus smell of the Vicks Vapor Rub I used to help ease her labored breathing.

The only smell that is anywhere near redeeming is the bouquet of yellow and white daisies with baby’s breath in a yellow smiley-face mug. They smell like springtime. If hope has a smell, fresh flowers and spring would be it.