The Floor on Floor Six

The irregular colorful tile on floor six and an overlay of hospital memories

Colorful tile on Floor 6 at the hospital. A. Cowen 2024

This is the full “hospital floor” post from this Sunday post. This post does have a paywall. To view the regular weekly post, including grid-based journal art, and engage in the comments, visit the Sunday post.

Hospital Layout

I was leaving the hospital one day last week, and I was walking the long way around to the stairwell. It’s a hospital that has two hospitals, with ambiguous lines of demarcation. Every floor has rooms in both hospitals. 

If you know what’s what, then you find out if the room you need is in Moffitt or Long, and you know to take the near or far elevators. 

After going back and forth to this hospital for more than 24 years, I’ve finally realized it’s potentially smarter to always take the near elevators and then just walk the long hallway to the other hospital. (The far elevators are really slow.) 

I have always taken the near or far elevators based on an M or L room number, never thinking about the simple fact that the long hallway to the far elevators exists on every floor. You can walk it at the start or at the end. 

Having had trouble finding a room number several times in recent weeks and walking the long hallway, the layout finally makes sense. (The numbering doesn’t, but the hallway does.) It isn’t all that complicated. I’ve just never bothered to think it through.

When you walk in and out of a hospital, navigation is usually not a priority. This isn’t a wayfinding mission.

I have one other hospital visit quirk. I take the stairs when I leave. I am well aware there is no way I could take them back up. I’m so out of shape and have gained so much weight this year that it somehow makes me feel better to at least take the stairs down. It is a reminder that I can. At least right now, I can. (And I am well aware that not everyone can. I am leaving after visiting someone who often needs transport to get home because there are eight stairs that make getting into the house something that always sits on a spectrum between challenging and impossible.) 

Last fall, when there were almost six months of hospitalization, I started spiraling the steps down on my way home. The stairwell entrance was just outside of the ICU in Moffitt. The stairwell was between me and the Moffitt elevators. It was an easy and intentional choice. It became part of my routine. It takes only a few extra seconds to walk the stairs.

When in Long, which often correlates to being in a regular or step-down room, I took the elevator and felt forlorn. I missed the comfort of the descent, of the spiral, of the reminder that, right now, my knees work, and my heart supports my effort. 

This time, I finally sorted it out. The stairs are mine for the walking no matter where the room is situated.

A Cafeteria Pit Stop

“There are three flights for each floor,” I told the boys when we visited the day before Mother’s Day. 

We were on floor 10. They weren’t super enthused about my “I take the stairs” approach. I pointed them to the elevators and said they could wait for me at the bottom.