Last Monday night I spent the night at the Hershey Medical Center. Please understand, this is far from the only night I’ve slept there, but it is the first night I was a patient and not just sleeping on the floor next to my wife. It was an…odd experience; I’m not used to being ill, so I make a really lousy patient, and my current complaint is such that I tend to be a little cranky at the best of times, and sleeping in a hospital is far from the best of times.

But it isn’t Monday or the testing that’s on my mind, but rather Tuesday morning. I was discharged early, so early in fact Cafe Soleil wasn’t yet open (but was getting there). It was a truly bitter-sweet visit, since I knew it would be the last.

Monday evening, when entering the hospital (uncommonly I entered via the “main” lobby next to the er) I saw the brand-spankin-new Starbucks they plopped right in the lobby itself; a place for quiet introspection will become, starting next Monday, yet another annoyingly loud place for crass commerce. Then when passing Cafe Soliel that evening (unable to enjoy anything, what with my firm limits on intake before the tests) I saw that small, sad little handwritten sign, thanking the patrons for their friendships, and noting their last day would be Friday.

Yep, the big guys come in with the bucks, and chase out the indi’s. What’s amusing is that the indi in question used to be a Seattle’s Best, back in the days before Starbucks bought them out and turned them into…well…Starbucks. But back in 1998, that little tiny stand near the vending machines with the pleasant staff and excellent coffee kept me going…while my wife was receiving chemotherapy, and my prematurely-harvested daughter lay in the NICU up on seven, I always knew I could run downstairs and grab a cappuchino (extra shot, thanks) and a smile, and for just a few moments not feel like my entire life was falling apart.
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