Like all nations and cultures, the VA hospital seems to have its own relationship with time, and people actually speak of “VA time.” Sort of like in Italy where, to do business, you must first engage in the niceties of social exchange. The hospital must have the only psychiatric ward where people really are broadcasting from the basement. Who would have guessed that this complex holds a barbershop, a retail store (tax-free), a rehabilitation center (with a jewelry-making laboratory), a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a mailroom, a library, a theater, a golf course, a patients' vegetable garden, and a ham radio association that uses the VA antenna. The VA hospital is a self-contained colony for veterans.

One gentleman stopped me, told me my coat was buttoned wrong, and then yelled out, “The sergeant would tell you to drop and give me 20, young lady!” I half believed that he was going to make me do it, but we parted with a chuckle, albeit a nervous one on my part. They will frequently ask me if I am lost, a common occurrence and one they seem to enjoy pointing out. The thoroughfares are filled primarily with men who are remarkably friendly. Into this dated setting, the patients themselves seem out of place, monitored and maintained as they are on multiple intravenous pumps, ventilators, and telemetry readouts. The hospital accoutrements, modern and familiar, are startling in comparison. The older wings of the hospital, housing the operating room and the surgical intensive care unit, remind me of my grammar school in Wisconsin, and were likely built in the same era, with the same linoleum, windowpanes, plaster walls, low ceilings, and narrow tiled hallways. The main entrnace is not called the main entrance it's the South Entrance. Building 122 connects to Building 8, which connects to Building 1, which, of course, connects to Tower. Leaving Building 128, a sign tells you that you are entering Building 122. As if to make the overall uncoordinated nature of the complex more apparent, signs point out these defects to everyone. Just like the patients, the buildings are chopped up, amputated, and anastamosed. Being lost at the VA hospital is common because there is no apparent design to the layers of old buildings, each forced together at odd intersections. Most patients and visitors enter and leave the VA hospital confused, disoriented, and lost. At the VA hospital, you feel like you've stepped back in time-or to a different country, one less developed and less modernized than the one we are used to.

Having been both a patient and a volunteer at a county hospital, I've experienced the “bottom of the health care barrel.” The VA is appreciably different. It is a different kind of hospital-and not just because it provides low-cost care. In my third year of medical school, a fair amount of my training takes place at the VA hospital. If our previous wars are any indication, the lucky military survivors from the war against terrorism will surely end up here, at the VA medical center. Given the terrorist attacks and the war our nation is currently in, I have been thinking a lot about people paying the price of freedom. “The Price of Freedom Is Visible Here.” So reads the sign in the entryway of the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, providing both a warning and a tribute.

Price of freedome