bon a petit

Nothing says appetizing like a compartmentalized aluminum tray of hospital food accompanied by the bleeps, groans, and gurgles of a 40 bed hospital ward overflowing with patients, families, and medical students. And here's me, Bed ต19, Nursing Team 2, tucked into the corner where only the neighboring 8 patients, their families, and anyone leaving the ward can catch a second gawk. To say nothing of the medical students, whose chill-out tables are between this and the next bank of gurneys.
It's a 40 bed ward in the university hospital with a central nursing station and wings of eight beds each running along either side. Each bed has a battered polyboard cabinet and most have battered plastic chairs. In the back, two androgynous tile bathrooms offer three toilets and a shower each--it's hard to imagine anyone but the students and nurses making much use of them--and a linen cabinet with more towels, sheets, and patient jumpers. The ceiling is dotted with fans that rotate above the drop-down curtain rails, and fluorescent lights flash and flicker. And rolling carts topped with electronics--screens to input patient information, electronic thermometers and blood pressure monitors, blood extraction and injection kits, and a few cleanup kits--scurry like ants guided by nurses in crisp blue.
Somehow, I manage to feel embarrassed and exposed, despite being in the corner, away from any television or general seating--something about being the only person with blond hair, skin especially pasty white, wearing a front-tie shirt large enough to wrap around and tuck into the back of pants large enough to accommodate one of me in each leg, and at a glance the youngest patient and about the only one able or allowed to feed myself. And beyond me being here for fattening up, the place food holds in Thai culture makes the metal tray especially significant.
"Can you eat Thai food?" was the third question the nurse asked, the second question from the doctor. And with the arrival of the metal tray, it is unasked on each of the dozen student faces turned owlishly in my direction.
Actually, the food isn't that bad. Were it fresh and hot, it would be something worth paying for (save for the rice, the blandness of which I resent): tom yam gai (boiled spicy chicken), gaang pak (a green curry of something like a plantain), and little chicken and corn balls deep fried in wok oil that's recently seen shrimp and garlic. They're rather less than palatable and threaten to sit as happily as a fast-food burger back stateside, but the curry and soup are surprisingly flavorful--whether it's the nature of Thai food or the unwillingness of the Thai cooks to kill all the flavor, I'll take it.
It's the stares that I'm not so big on, and the constant hocking/wretching I could do without. The guy across from me had a nurse inject a horse-grade syringe of paste into a tube running down his nose, and before the syringe emptied, he was wrenching the contents back up. Next to him was a man just brought back from a procedure and noisily hacking and gurgling through a tube. In the far corner there was a man whose steady screams were broken by gurgling wretches. Also over there is someone whose crying and screaming has gone beyond normal human sounds to a high pitched wheeze.
Bon a petit.