Pettiness is the first casualty...

Hospitals strip a lot from you - your independence, your confidence, sometimes your will to live. But pettiness too. Pettiness is the first casualty of the ICU waiting room. No one has the energy for it.

Would you like this magazine? I'm done with it.
Oh, let me remove my coat. Take the seat. Take the seat, take it.
I'm going to get a soda. Would you like one?
Is this okay, or should I keep flipping?

Even the employees in the gift shop and the cafeteria and the food court and at the coffee carts, are to a person, respectful and courteous. Never solicitous, but kind. Because they don't know if your son just died, your wife just received chemo, you've been told you won't see June.

There is a basic human concern in hospitals.

ICU [excerpt from Coronado]
Dennis Lehane

...a capacity for living

There was something about Jewel Lut that sank into men's flesh the way heat did. It wasn't just that she was pretty, had a beautiful body, moved in a loose, languid way that made you picture her naked no matter what she was wearing. No, there was more to it. Jewel, never the brightest girl in town and not even the most charming, had something in her eyes that none of the women Elgin ever met had; it was a capacity for living, for taking moments – no matter how small or inconsequential - and squeezing every last thing you could out of them. Jewel gobbled up life, dove into it like it was a cool pond cut in the shade of the mountain on the hottest day of the year.

Running out of Dog
Dennis Lehane