Its amazing how our brain works; a smell causes a chain reaction through our complex system triggering a memory. A smell that I used to associate with dread and fear is the smell of a hospital. The smell brings me back to the age of eight. This is the year that my life had to be put on hold while my mother was recovering from a horrific car accident. April 3 rd, 1994, 6:50 am, my mother was found lifeless with her mid sections crushed underneath the tires of a minivan. She was victim of a freak accident, and was acting as a live wedge for a van that was rolling down a hill. It was that morning when my life came to a sudden halt. My mother wasn't there to prepare a brown sack lunch or to pick me up from school. For the next 3 months, I spent majority of my day at the hospital. I walked around exploring the hospital floors, running my fingers along the walls and reading the descriptions of the art displays. My mother was in a coma for couple weeks. The doctors had her stuffed with a highly specialized foam to reduce internal bleeding. This foam caused her body to triple in size, distorting all her physically features. I remember her eyes being swollen, her skin pale, machines attached to every exposed skin and the sickening smell of the hospital. The entire hospital smells the same, but upon entering the ICU the smell seem to intensify.
I've often marveled at how complex the human mind can be. A random scent has the potential to cause a chain reaction through our nervous system, triggering memories and emotions that might have lain dormant for years. The smell that spurs my nervous system to generate these kinds of memories is the smell of a hospital.
For the longest time, I associated the unique, antiseptic scent common to almost all hospitals with dread and fear. When that odor hits my nose, I'm eight years old again. I remember the horror I felt when I heard that my mother had been found unconscious; that her midsection had been crushed beneath a minivan's tires. It was a freak accident; the van had rolled down a hill and struck my mother during her morning walk. That day was the blackest moment of my childhood. I was struck immediately by the thought that I might never enjoy mom's brown sack lunches ever again. I might not ever see my mom again.
For the next 3 months, I was at the hospital when I wasn't in school. Things looked very bad for my mother when they first brought her in; as a family, we dared not say to each other what was on our minds: it seemed like mom was going to die. She was in a coma for a couple weeks. As a treatment for her grave injuries, the doctors had her stuffed with a highly specialized foam to reduce internal bleeding. This foam caused her bloat and swell, distorting all of her physical features. I remember her eyes bulging from her sockets, her skin pale, and machines attached to every part of her body. At times, it seemed a struggle to remember that this science experiment was my mom. The smell inside of the ICU was sickening to me. It seemed to cover the entire hospital, too. There was no way to get away from it, really.