Words by Lucy Kaplan PZ ’28
Graphic By Eli Heart PZ ’26

The bed.

The bed is surprisingly comfortable, or rather, it is considerably less painful than standing up. If I lie still and screw up my eyes, I can make out the illusion of normalcy. 

It is seven o’clock. It might be morning. The room is unwavering in its sterility. I am six years old, watching a bad movie and picking chip crumbs from under my nails while I curl under the covers. My parents float around the room, checking this and checking that: cluttered, lightly aglow, as a child’s room should be. My periphery is filled with games and storybooks and bouquets of beautiful daisies.

No, that’s wishful thinking. The daisies cry silently in their cheap plastic vase for water that is not coming. It is seven o’clock. I am six years old. My room is not cluttered with games and storybooks. It is rife with wires – kinks and coils. The emergency telephone wire, twisted into a loop as tight as my curls, hanging pale and limp against the yellow walls. Electrical wires from seemingly every contraption in this slightly-too-small room: the reclining bed, the intercom, the television. 

Then there are the wires I can still feel squeezing around my neck as I sleep. They won’t let me go. 

There are three of them, with their distinct functions, each of which I understand in its entirety, an equally impressive and upsetting task for six-year-old me. One for antibiotics through the back of my left hand. One for saline solution on the other. One into my stomach, pumping out the waste my body can’t handle. They bind me in my place, arms denting my sides. I watch the movie and pick the chip crumbs from under my nails while the daisies cry almost as much as I imagined my parents did.   

I do not much remember my childhood bedroom, but I can all too easily relive the icy sensation of every wire tugging inside of me as I shift in my hospital bed.