“Hello?” a woman in a room nearby said, over and over again. I wondered why the nurses didn’t go to her, try to calm her down. But when I went out to the hallway to peer into the room, the room of unrelenting hellos, I saw her hanging off the side of the bed. At first she didn’t notice me and kept on with her chants. And then, when she noticed me, she said, “Help me.”

But I didn’t. Instead, I just stared at her.

“Can you help me?” she asked.

I didn’t move. I didn’t say a word. I turned around and walked away.

“Hello?” she said.

From a nearby room I heard a man respond with “Yes?”

She had found a mate in her chant. I walked closer to the man, who kept responding yes on cue to her hellos. They were strange songbirds among the beeps and chatter from the nurses’ station.

“Hello?”

“Yes?”

“Hello?”

“Yes?”

On and on it went, a spooky incantation.

I looked into the room and saw a man who looked as disheveled as the woman begging for help. An older man, he was uncovered, and looked insane, or at least like he had come from somewhere far worse than this hospital. They both looked like regulars.

I stared at him from the doorway, and he didn’t acknowledge me. He just blinked and said, “Yes?” when the woman next door prompted him.

This hospital was full of weirdos, lost people, families huddled around someone lying as flat as a board, surrounded by beeping machines, or nervously watching their loved one drink and eat from the same pink plastic dinnerware that can be found in hospitals everywhere.

I walked back to my father, to his room, which he was sharing with someone I could only see parts of from behind a curtain. When I sat down, my father motioned for me to come closer to his bedside.

“Did you see this guy?” my father whispered to me, motioning to the other side of the curtain. I leaned over and looked at the man lying there. He was about my age, and also covered in cuts and bruises. He was blasting Maury Povich and smiling at the TV.

I looked at my father and he whispered, “He’s a real loser.”

He and my father looked like they had been in similar fights, perhaps with each other, and yet my father was still able to retain a superiority complex.

“He’s detoxing,” he said.

“So are you,” I told him.

My mother huffed. We did not talk about the mechanics of his disease, not now, not ever. In fact, he had been so vague with the nurses and doctor that they looked at me blankly when I asked about his withdrawal symptoms. It shocked me to the point of anger.

“His pancreas is shutting down,” I yelled at them. “That doesn’t happen overnight.”