There are telltale sounds – beeping monitors, ventilators, pagers, trolleys. At first, these seem abstract to me, more like faint rumbles and pulses, signals from somewhere deep in my unconscious, but they soon coalesce into the comprehensible and the familiar. I also feel an uptick in pain awareness. This is nothing alarming, a fact that I’m sure can be explained by the woolly blanket of medication – morphine, probably – that I seem to be wrapped in. Although it’s easier not to, I do eventually open my eyes, and what strikes me at once is that no healthcare plan I’ve ever been on would provide a hospital room even remotely as luxurious as this one. It’s an entire suite, with a comfortable seating area, a coffee table, and what from here looks like . . . a wet bar? That’s not right. I squint and do my best to stay focused, but I can’t make out what it is. Probably some kind of medical unit. But that raises a more important question.
