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Modern Medicine
Kayla McVeigh

 
 The room looks different this time. Old frumpy furniture with thread-
bare cushions has been replaced with sleek modern benches that are resistant to 
wearing down. Likewise, the staff seems to have been upgraded to young doctors 
and nurses with plastic skin. The room is still framed by three walls and a sliding 
glass door peeking from behind a curtain the doctor left pulled back slightly from 
earlier during his mandatory pop-in. The curtain is new and a different color 
from the one that was here when I first arrived. This medical curtain is so fresh it 
hangs with folded creases still visible from its days pressed and packaged tightly in 
a warehouse facility, waiting to be ordered. The tubes and equipment they insert-
ed and hooked up to me smell sterile and of  saline. 
 A needle from my IV is pinching with a cold sensation where it is taped 
to the flesh of  my arm and tethers me to the room through a bruised vein. The 
needle’s plastic wrapping still lingers on the speckled countertop, torn open but 
not yet discarded. A beeping monitor is watching my vitals. It rhythmically fills 
the room with an auditory reminder of  my decline. The room not only looks new, 
but it also feels new, much like the crisp atmosphere of  a model home. Despite 
the efforts of  baking sheets, the prospective homeowners see through the decep-
tively warm gooey cookies that are trying to feed them the lie of  a home. Con-
vincing as chocolate chips might be, the buyers always know better. They see the 
space around them—it is lifeless, an artificial prop of  the real thing. 
 The screen facing me clicks black after a long period of  inactivity. Its 
shiny and metallic construction is fitting with the hospital’s emphasis on innova-
tion. Examining my reflection in the blackness of  the screen, I can see one thing 
out of  place in this room. He told me my kidneys are failing with the stench 
of  coffee wafting off his breath. His story is that of  5:00 A.M. yoga and nonfat 
cappuccinos. My body, however, tells the story of  illness and death. My ailment 
is the last archaic feature of  this state-of-the-art room, nonresponsive to ground-
breaking treatments in plastic packaging. When I finally give way, I will be a fossil 
that my doctor will raise his hands over, joined with his fellow Johns Hopkins 
graduates. They will celebrate one more step into the modern age as my body is 
wheeled away. The room will be prepared for a body more receptive and willing. 
They will praise the miracles of  modern medicine.