children's hospital

After struggling through dense brush and tangled vines, we gained entry through a battered and remote door. Most admitted here probably checked in the main entrance or rushed through the emergency room. I shouldn't want to be here, no one here ever did. This was a hospital for children. Completed in 1937 and operational into the 1970s, the large building must have had thousands of young patients pass through it. Whether it remained a children's ward it's entire life is uncertain. The hundreds of beds and wheelchairs still lingering in the hallways seemed adult-sized. At a children's hospital, one would think there would be more diminutive fittings; when eventually I came upon a crib, it too was rather large.

Moving through the quiet passages, one can't help but feel the patients' lingering presence. On either end of the main halls are expansive, sunny rooms crowded with gurneys, beds and wheelchairs. Bedpans, catheters, medicine bottles- all these items bring to mind the ill who once were treated here, but they are sterile reminders. The carts piled with styrofoam pitchers still bearing the name of the patient for whom they were intended are more affecting remembrances.