Laying in bed, blinking my eyes as they adjusted to the sunlight, I could already tell I was worse.

I reached for my glasses on the table. My fingers felt sore, swollen. Yesterday, a doctor had said it was just a complication from strep throat, and prescribed antibiotics. But now there were fiery little blisters, itchy and burning, all over my hands. This didn’t seem like strep.

Having no idea what to do, I called my mom. She was in a class and couldn’t pick up the phone. Through some sort of parental ESP, my dad called a minute later. “Get to the emergency room,” he said. “Like now.”

Half an hour later, one of my roommates dropped me off at the hospital. It was a sprawling concrete and glass complex in a cornfield at the outskirts of the suburbs. A comically-large red sign, with EMERGENCY written on both sides, pointed me to the door.

Inside the lobby was a woman seated behind a computer. She took down all my information, including a condensed rundown of the aches, horrible chills, and now the blisters and sores. Then she printed off a white plastic wristband with some QR codes on it, wrapped it around my wrist, and told me to go into the examining room behind her.

A few seconds later, a short nurse with a tight brown ponytail came into the room. She sat down at the computer in the corner, and fired off some generic health questions:

“You smoke?”

“No.”

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Medicine?”

“Yeah.”

When she had finished, I offered up descriptions of my dizziness/achiness/chills/fever/blisters/sores. The very act of telling was making me feel a little better on its own, just having someone listen. Until I realized her attention was entirely focused on the screen, so I shut up.

Another nurse walked into the room. In hushed tones, she whispered about a person having come in and lain down on the floor in the waiting room. The ponytailed nurse told her to get a cot, and that she’d be out there in a minute.

She then took me out a back door, and we moved into the belly of the hospital. Down a long white corridor, ambulances sat staged and ready outside an open door. We walked through the main nurses’ bay, where people in blue scrubs hurried back and forth. She took me to a dingy green room, not much bigger than the hospital bed inside. Muttering something about a gown and my shirt, she scuttled out, sliding the curtain closed behind her.

Now I was scared. Just being in that room made whatever afflicted me feel more serious.

I took off my shirt, and fumbled awkwardly with the gown. A few moments later, a young blond nurse came into the room, and maybe ten minutes after she left, a physician assistant. I repeated for each of them my symptoms; the PA had a hunch, but said the doctor would be able to confirm. I sat on the bed to wait, looking down at my feet. The tile floor seemed dirty.

There was a knock outside, and the doctor strode in, followed by a pudgy bespectacled kid typing on a rolling computer station. The doctor asked me what was wrong. As I told him, he looked at my hands, then bent forward to look at my face. He pulled out a small flashlight to inspect my throat.

“Woah, come look at this!” he said, motioning to the kid on the computer. He looked too, nodded, and went back to typing.

The doctor leaned back against the wall, and told me it was hand, foot and mouth disease. A relatively common virus, similar to chicken pox. He told me there was basically nothing they could do, I’d just have to wait it out. I had no idea how I’d gotten it, but he said that it was going around at the moment, almost an epidemic in the area. He asked if I needed anything else, and I told him no, I guessed not. So he washed his hands, and then he and computer boy left, leaving the curtain open.

Sitting there on the bed in that creepy gown, I was unsure of what came next. I figured there would have to be more paperwork or something before I could leave, so I waited.

I looked back down at my feet. That awful hospital smell, sick, sweet, and warm, oozed up into my nostrils. Outside the room, some machine issued loud pings at regular intervals: Beep. Beep. Beep.

A nurse across the way was cleaning out another room. She bundled up the linens from the bed into a blue trash bag, and wiped down the counter. When she had finished, she shut off the lights, and dragged the bag around the corner. I wondered who had been in there, what they had been sick with, what had happened to them.

Suspended on the wall next to the bed, a wooden cross caught my eye. There was a silver man on it, wearing flowing robes and holding his arms out. In the dim light, he appeared dirty and worn. He looked up and out, staring at something I didn’t see.

I wondered what it would be like to die here, if these were the final sights you saw as you lay gasping for breath. It occurred to me that such must be the reality for many people. I promised myself I would spend more time in beautiful places.

A nurse rolled a bed past the door, which contained an old man with a wiry white mustache. He looked at the ceiling, dazed.

The dripping of the faucet in the room slowed to a stop — tick…tick…..tick…….

I felt ready to leave this place and go home.