It was one of the few times I was actually asleep in the hospital, pain-killer induced to be sure. I awoke to the dancing of a flashlight beam bouncing randomly around the walls of the room; it was around 4:00 AM. Suddenly a hooded head peered from behind one of the divider curtains, a pair of thick glasses with little lights mounted on either sided.“Are you Robert” the voice asked. Upon affirmation, the black jump suited character flung back the curtain and stepped close to me. The pain meds occasionally had me on the verge of hallucinating; what immediately came to mind was that I was being visited by Harry Tuttle, rogue heating engineer, a character from the Terry Gilliam movie, Brazil.
In actuality he was the nighttime lab tech who had come to collect some blood samples from me. Yet for a few minutes there I felt like I was living out an odd parallel with the scene in the film.
The following day, while doing my mandatory exercise walk in the hallway, dragging my IV stanchion along with me, I happened to notice the list of departments and their corresponding floors listed on the plaque next to the elevators. Sure enough, there it was: “Central Services”.
Here's the actual scene:
