Just another day

I wish I was allowed a camera in the hospital today, there was a picture I would have loved to have captured.  It wasn't anything special or incredible, but it was something that just showed some of what I see every day in a way that captured it well.  I was walking along the port side corridor in the hospital (this is the side where all the wards are rather than the starboard side where the operating rooms are).  In the background I could hear songs and music, African songs full of praise and energy.  As I looked down the corridor I could see the electricians, a Texan and a Geordie chatting next to an entrance down into engineering in the middle of the ship, and past them I could see George, one of my translator friends and the recovery room staff wheeling a blue trolley with a patient coming out of surgery.  I guess for many that image doesn't have much significance, but for me it symbolised the mix of what I see and do in the hospital.  I pass the patients in the corridor, and will say hello, but I don't work with them.  I don't have have the contact that the nurses do, or the insight into their problems that the surgeons do.  I work with the equipment, generally away from the patients, just like the majority of the other people on the ship.  But I do get to see the patients every day, just a little and catch a tiny glimpse into why we are here.