Story of the Month

Operation Smile is committed to raising awareness to the mental battle that many patients face during and after their hospital stays. To foster creativity and bring attention to the importance of mental health, we are excited to introduce our “Story of the Month” competition! We invite individuals to express their experiences and thoughts about mental health through various creative mediums. View this month's story and submission deadlines below!

December's Story of the Month: The Beeping, by Lily Bishop, Sophomore

The hospice rug is itchy

And I can't play poker.

I’m not wearing shoes, just socks. Pink socks. 

Just walking down the hall under the obnoxious yellow lights.

It’s late at night, but I have school tomorrow. 

When I wander far enough down the hall

I find her door ajar

I slip inside, past the many bodies gathered around her bed

And sit next to her in an empty stiff armchair.

Between the chatter of my family

I hear an enigmatic noise

That seems louder than everything else. 

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A one second interval separates the beckoning calls from the machine 

The machine that towers above her weak body

Like a villainous protector

The beeping consumes my consciousness

And I can't hear anything now.

I look up to the ceiling, 

And the paint chip in the right hand corner of the room

The one above the window

Looks like a fish. 

It also looks like a pepper if I turn my head.

She coughs, loud and strained

And in a blink I return, wholly, to reality. 

For a brief moment

I hear no beep

And my heart drops into my stomach.

Beep. 

I inhale. 

The beeping returns,

And I sink into the chair.

I do not want to be here anymore.

But I look at her again

I see her tubes and her machines

And her pain enters me for a moment.

The beeping is louder now

And the air I inhale

Seems so much thinner.

With tears in my eyes

I try to run away inside my own mind, I try to think of something else

But I can still hear the beeps.

Author's note: This is about when I would visit my grandmother in hospice when I was younger after school. I would play poker with the nurses, but I didn't actually know how, so I would never have fun because I would always lose. When I would leave for too long, I would go back to the room and sit next to my grandmother in the same stiff red armchair. She had a vitals machine above her bed and it would beep with her pulse. This freaked me out as a child because I did not like repeating beeps, clicks or noises in general. I wanted to sit next to her though, so I would try to imagine things or observe things inside the hospice room to distract myself from my dying grandmother and the beeping noises. I liked finding shapes in the paint chips and the stains on the ceiling. This poem encapsulates my use of escapism when I tried to confront my fear of watching my grandmother die in front of me by sitting next to her. I was always so afraid that the beeps would stop and she would die, but I was also so afraid of feeling like I heard them so much that I would hear them everywhere, and I hated hearing them. But I felt like I needed to in order to make sure she was still alive.