The Vending Machine on 3 Doesn't Take Cards, and Other True Facts

The parking garage attached to our building has four levels and the lighting on level two has been half out since sometime last winter, one whole row of fixtures just gone, and nobody’s fixed it because it’s apparently not anybody’s specific job. I park on three now out of habit more than safety, though I’d be lying if I said the dark row on two didn’t factor in a little. Walking to my car at 7:15 in the morning in August the light’s already up. Walking to it in January it isn’t, and there’s a specific kind of quiet in an empty parking garage before sunrise that I don’t get anywhere else in my life, not even in the hospital itself, which is never actually quiet, just quiet in patches.

There’s a vending machine on 3, near the elevators, that only takes exact change or a card that’s been finicky since I started here three years ago. I’ve watched at least a dozen people, staff and visitors both, put a card in, watch the screen do nothing, put it in again, give up. I keep four quarters in my scrub pocket now specifically for that machine, not because I even want what’s in it most nights, but because I’ve been the person standing there at 5am with a card that won’t read and nothing else open on the floor, and I decided I wasn’t doing that again.

The hallway outside the family consultation room is the one part of the building I’d actually call quiet, real quiet, at 4am. It’s set back from the main corridor, carpeted where the rest of the floor is that hard tile, and the carpet alone changes the sound of it, footsteps go soft instead of squeaking. There’s a window at the end that looks out over the garage roof and part of the access road, and on a clear night you can see actual stars out there, which surprised me the first year I worked here because I didn’t think you could see stars from anywhere this close to Pittsburgh. Turns out you just need the right window and the right hour.

I don’t spend a lot of time in that hallway by choice, obviously, it’s not a hallway anybody wants a reason to be in. But it’s 4am sometimes and since I’m already awake and not going anywhere, I’ve noticed the same things enough times out there that they’ve become mine somehow. The window. The carpet going quiet under your shoes. A radiator down at the far end that ticks when it’s cold out, on its own schedule, nothing to do with the thermostat as far as I can tell.

None of this is dramatic. It’s not supposed to be. It’s just the building, the actual physical place I’ve spent a third of my adult life inside of, and most of what I could tell you about it has nothing to do with anything that happened there. Just a machine that eats your quarters half the time anyway, and a hallway that’s quieter than it has any right to be.