The fluorescent lights hummed overhead in the sterile corridors of St. Mary’s General Hospital, casting their harsh, unforgiving glow on everything below. It was the kind of lighting that made even the healthiest person look pallid and worn, and for 78-year-old Margaret Chen, it only emphasized her vulnerability as she sat hunched in her wheelchair near the busy nurses’ station.
Margaret had been waiting for what felt like hours, though the clock on the wall indicated it had only been forty-five minutes. Time moved differently when you were in pain, when every breath was a conscious effort, and when the world around you seemed to blur into a cacophony of indifferent voices and hurried footsteps.
