Hello, world. I'm never sure when I'm going to see you again but it's nice when I do.

The food here is complicated. It's char-grilled and basted and sauteed and drizzled, molested up and down any number of ways, but it's always got the same taste, like the creature it came from ate too much metal before they chopped it up and served it. It's the taste of mass-production, I guess. I should be thankful - at least it isn't oatmeal. This other guy I roomed with last week, all they gave him was oatmeal.

I've roomed with a number of people. Some of them told stories that never happened, some of them prayed a lot, some of them were in a coma. The coma patients get a lot more visitors than the ones that were awake, I've noticed. I've outlasted a number of cellmates who, through rejuvenation or death, have left the hospital. Patients are usually moved to their own room before they die. I'm in a room by myself now, but it's got two beds, and I'm sure they'll find me company soon.

It's taking me forever to die. I think it's pissing off the staff, but they can't do anything. I'm too sick to be in a nursing home and too stubborn to get any sicker. That's what the doctor says, anyway. On more than one occasion I've been tempted to pull the monitors off my chest so the pace readout would register me dead, just to see the reaction of the nurses. I bet I'm costing somebody a lot of money.

I remember in the dentist's office they would stick posters to the ceiling so you could amuse yourself while the doctor put a drill in your face. They usually had picture of a digitally-enhanced smiling gorilla or a bunch of penguins or something. They don't have those here, just a sterile-looking television set mounted on a rotating wall support. There are no remotes because the tvs are so old, so you have to call a nurse to come and turn it on or off or adjust the brightness or change the channel or lower the volume. I'm a big channel-surfer.

Most days I just peddle myself around in this wheelchair they gave me; I don't need it, but they gave it to me and it sure beats walking. The hallways in this place are really wide and almost completely white except the tile on the floor has little lines in it, like the grainy bits in wheat bread. Then there's a big blue line that runs down the middle of the hallway. There isn't much to see in the hallways, usually. Most patients are too busy thinking about dying or doing it or in a coma to come out and wheelchair around with me. Once I saw two nurses wheeling a body down the hallway on a gurney. It was this old patient I knew, guy named Freddy. He was a construction worker that met with some asbestos. I waved at him but that just seemed to piss off the nurses, who were rushing pell-mell down that blue line like the gurney was a runaway, piloted by the cold, dead Freddy. I pumped my fist and cheered his escape.

That really pissed them off.