The Elderly Hospital

It is a proudly venerable institution
a sprawling, red-brick edifice of
considerable age and girth, much like
the elderly within the constantly growing
population of the city. Just as age has
conferred on them added weight of years
and poundage, the hospital has been the
subject of countless additions over the
years. Its corridors a long and endless
mysterious maze to those uninitiated
in the intricacies of its varied and many
departments and sub-sections, with their
uncountable examining rooms. In one
of which sits a septuagenarian a month
shy of eighty, patiently awaiting his
post-surgical cardiac appointment. 
There, he is courteously greeted as his
cardiologist enters, shakes his hand
cocks his head and avers how well he
appears, introducing him to male and
a female interns whose appearance
remind the patient of his grandchildren.
Observe, the doctor tells the interns,
the sternum, healed after open-heart
surgery, then lifting the patient's pant-leg
points out the long scars alongside the
calf where a major vein was selected to
replace a blocked artery. The doctor
recalls the robust, muscular chest he had
examined of a man in outstanding
clinical health who lifted weights as
opposed to the man before him whose
loss of muscle mass and weight was
a startling contrast. The interns lean
forward, smiling, as the doctor lauds his
patient's recovery from a surgery that
replaced his mitral valve, assuring the
patient that all was well, blood and oxygen
flowing unrestricted to his heart and
congratulations; same time next year.