Under this roof of rectangular things: the motorized bed; electrical outlets; metallic IV machines, clicking and humming - the only things oddly shaped are the people hanging from bags of chemotherapy. The bed ridden person must push a red button for a nurse to come: "Nurse, I can't breathe. Nurse, I have anger. Nurse, let me die." In the bathroom, where urine is carefully measured, a beaded string can be pulled for help, the spaced plastic beads like a cheap childhood rosary. There'd be surprisingly little to watch from the sky. Nurses run in and out. Patients are patients or not. Doctors are caring or not (even a hello will cost seventy five dollars). The hallways are oval., like a high school track. The nurses go on rounds and wake you with anti-fungal mouth medications, racks of test tubes and blood pressure cuffs. The thermometer beeps when it decides your temperature. You never get used to the way veins constrict during pressure checks; never get used to the endless line of needles: blood oxygen pricks on hands, IVs inserted  into arm and chest, blood drawings inside elbows, huge bone marrow needles in the hip bones. ( "next time you stick that stake in me, damn well make sure I'm unconscious.") You might as well be an appliance plugged to the wall, each five days of chemotherapy. Move, the alarms go off. Unplug yourself; alarms go off. The chemotherapy drips, clicks, hums into veins. The anti nauseas fog you up. Thirty days in the bone marrow unit and you never leave the room. You study the crack in the hospital ceiling, the one that looked like a rabbit; play with the blue paper mask the nurse gives you. You turn the mask into a tent, a bedpan, a bow tie, a beret, a moth, a kidney. You could starve yourself; put a photo of your loved one by the bed. Once a day, the nurse unhooks you from the IV to shower, covers your chest with plastic wrap, then leaves. You always take longer than you need in the water - stay under its pulse; rinse off the strange chemical smells you emit. And after you step out, drying slowly, and peeling the plastic from under arm and over nipple, you try to cover the hospital's smell with baby powder, change to a fresh white gown. You could walk to the bed, call the nurse, say I'm ready to be re-hooked now, but never do. There are whole minutes when you keep the door closed and walk to every corner of the room, not connected to anything.