Visiting Hours

I went to visit my friend in a hospital yesterday. And this is the third time I went there in this month, although I am not a big fan of hospitals.
No matter how nice they make the building, it’s still a place for sick people. So, hospitals are not really what I call a happy place, and going there is not the highlight of my day.
As a start, I really do not know why we visit the sick. People said that by visiting the sick, we are encouraging him to recover soon. But then again, the doctors tell the sick to take plenty of rest, day and night. But when we visit him, he will not be able to rest, won’t he?
So now, how long should we be there? I usually only want to stay for less than an hour. But how if there are a lot of other visitors and all of them seem like they are having a great time, despite the fact that at the same time the sick person is having a needle stuck on his arm. So if I go home then, it seems like I am a party spoiler aren’t I? Probably that’s what on everybody’s minds also. So then nobody wants to be the one who go home first. Everybody is looking at each other, waiting for the others, until one of them starves to death.

And the visitors always talk about the sickness. Like last night, they talked about the surgery on thyroid, and I looked like I was listening with enraptured interest, while in my mind, I did not have any idea what thyroid was. For all I know it can be part of your finger nail or ankle, I can never be sure.
The visitors also keep asking the sick many questions about how he feels (which we know that the answer is “terrible” because he is, in fact, sick!) and try to make a funny remark to entertain the sick, and then laugh very loud.
Hmm, so maybe that’s why we need to visit the sick. He will get annoyed by us during the visit and will be motivated to get well as soon as possible so that he does not have to be visited again.