H1N1 all up in my face

20th and Emerson, Denver

Ahhh, hospital country. It's like a vacation in the city. In L.A. I lived just blocks away from Kaiser Permanente, Children's Hospital, and Hollywood Presbyterian. This is a major reason I'd see so much Gross in that neighborhood. My neighborhood was haunted by abandoned latex gloves, bloody bandages, and, near Good Samaritan downtown, freaking TEETH. In Denver my normal walks don't take me near any hospitals, though I guess Denver Health isn't too far away. However, the other day I was walking on the other side of town, near Denver's equivalent to my L.A. hospital arcade, when I came across this little reminder of flu season. The last time I got the flu--probably in 2006--I ended up going to the hospital because my fever wouldn't come down below 104 for several days. They made me wear one of these masks while I sat sweating and shivering in the waiting room. I can only imagine the sickly person who tore this mask off while stumbling through the neighborhood in a state of feverish hallucination. Once again, I wish I had a portable lab (and any skills whatsoever as a scientist), and I'd test the crap out of this mask to see what disgusting diseases and viruses it's harboring.