development
Jessica Walker My apartment is on the fifth floor of what once was a hospital. The realtor told me nervously of the building’s former life during my video tour. I don’t love that, I said. I didn’t say—My father died of cancer nine months ago. I didn’t want to increase her discomfort. I took the apartment. I had come to the rental market late with a large dog. It was my best option. The developer tried to retain elements of the hospital’s “hospitalness,” misguidedly thinking of this as a selling point. The hallways are painted an institutional pea green. The glossy gray floors shine under lighting that manages to be simultaneously bright and soul-dulling. The elevators are deep and wide. You can imagine stretchers squeaking down the corridors, patients— immobile logs beneath crisp white sheets. You can imagine this even if your father didn’t just die after four hospitalizations in a year’s time. You are on the highest floor, my sister tells me. The really sick people are on the lower floors. In the ER. I know, I say. But I don’t say why we think what we think. And I try, I really do try to appreciate the place—a luxury apartment I could never afford if its macabre history had not significantly decreased its value. I have high ceilings, picture windows, mountain views, vintage hardwood floors and bafflingly low utility bills. The place is brick and square and solid. A fortress. I never lose electricity, even in an ice storm. My building—unlike the human body—is built to endure. But when I take my trash out