I Traveled the World From My Hospital Bed

Devan Sipher was a world traveler. And then a terrible accident landed him in a hospital bed. It may have turned out to be the most interesting trip of his life. (Photo: Thinkstock)

I woke up and I didn’t know where I was. It was that feeling you get when you’ve traveled too many places in too little time. Was I in Miami? Was I in Marrakesh?

I looked for identifying features. There was sunlight pouring in from the window onto the vaguely Scandinavian furniture. Then I noticed the bars on the bed and the heart monitor. With great disappointment I realized I was in the intensive care unit at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Still.

It all came back to me with a wave of nauseating pain. On July 3rd, I had been run over by a double-decker tour bus while crossing the street (on a green light). Doctors had saved my life, but I’d been in the ICU ever since. And I would remain there for a total of 77 days. Goodbye, summer. Goodbye, traveling.

Or maybe not.

Every day a myriad of nurses and doctors visited my room in the ICU, and as they spoke about debriding my wounds and monitoring my blood pressure, I couldn’t help but notice a mélange of foreign accents.

I guessed easily that Mario came from Italy, and I’m sure I wasn’t the first patient to wax enthusiastic about my visits to his homeland. I talked about the ruins in Rome and the gelato in Genoa, and he smiled indulgently as if I were a reverse Christopher Columbus discovering the Old World.

Kathy’s accent was harder to place. She had lived many years in England, but it wasn’t a British accent. My guess was French, but I wasn’t even close. As Kathy drew blood from a catheter in my jugular vein, she told me she had been born in Burma. The reason for her exodus is part of the tumultuous history of that Southeast Asian nation now known as Myanmar. Civil wars and military juntas were a good distraction from the pain of my broken bones and gaping wounds. But not good enough. Kathy refilled my morphine drip, allowing me to relax as she spoke of a land of golden temples and lush river valleys with archaeological remains going back 400,000 years.

Malaya also described a beautiful, verdant country when she spoke of the Philippines. Though Malaya had worked in New York for decades, she still considered her home to be the house she owned in Manila, where she frequently returned. While she ripped malfunctioning electrodes from my chest, I took the opportunity to ask her questions about a place where mango trees bloomed in her beloved tropical garden.

Speaking with Kathy and Malaya allowed me to feel like I was escaping the hospital. I didn’t only feel like I was learning about their homelands; I felt like I was traveling there. Because for me traveling isn’t just about seeing sandy vistas or eating exotic meals, it’s about meeting people who grew up differently than I have, talking with them and learning about their lives.

Though I was painfully aware that there wouldn’t be any international flights in my near future, every day I interacted with people from foreign lands — and without ever leaving my room. From Poland to Ghana. From the Dominican Republic to Pakistan. And even Tibet.

I wasn’t aware of previously meeting anyone from Tibet, outside of once eating at a Tibetan restaurant in New York. Not only was Tashi from Tibet, but she took 30-hour flights once a year back to Lhasa. Her parents are part of the nomadic people who still eke out an existence in a mountain region north of Lhasa. But two of Tashi’s siblings had moved to the United States, where her sister is a teacher in Southern California and her brother is a manager of a Whole Foods in New York. Tashi had followed after them and was now enrolled in nursing school at New York University.

Her life was so unlike mine. And her family’s tale of hardships and emigration was something both ancient and out of the morning’s headlines. I couldn’t imagine the difficulty of going from a pastoral childhood herding animals to fighting rush hour on the subways of New York City. But I felt grateful that Tashi had shared some of her inspiring journey with me as I lay immobile in my hospital bed contemplating my own challenging future.

There are the places you go. And the places you are taken.

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