A hospital is oftentimes considered a scary place to the average person. Among the many things to fear about it include blood, doctors, needles, machines, freelance germs, all sorts of medical cutlery, ill or injured people, death, and of course, those creepy gowns that don't close up in the back.
Many of these concerns and more could be valid or otherwise reasons not to see a loved one when they're an inpatient:
- It brings back bad memories of their own hospitalization or another loved one's, especially if either had the same or similar disease/injury and the latter never made it out.
- It may make them face the patient's or their own mortality.
- It's directly or indirectly their fault the person is hospitalized.
- They last saw each other on bad terms and they may not get the ability to make proper amends.
- They may not know the person too well and may feel that visiting them would be awkward or inappropriate.
- They may fear catching something while visiting a building full of sick people.
- They may be literally physically unable to see them (they may be badly injured themselves, they don't have the transportation, esp. if they live or the patient were transferred out of state, they're barred from seeing them, etc.)
- The person may be selfish and/or unfeeling and doesn't truly care about the patient, or the patient themselves isn't liked enough to warrant visitors.
Whatever the reason, they may not wish to see this person in the setting and may or may not be convinced of doing so as a plot point or by the episode's end. They could also try to see the person, even stepping into the room and trying to be with them, but could be overwhelmed by the whole situation and run off. What could make the scenario even worse is if the patient dies, leading to their loved one beating themselves up over not seeing them when they had the chance.
Obviously, this occurs in a Sick Episode if the patient is particularly sick or injured to the point of being admitted, such as from cancer or from a car accident. Can be a dark variant of Daddy Didn't Show if the hospitalized person is a kid. Closely related to The Patient Has Left the Building. While it's mostly about visitors not wanting to see patients, the rarer inversion can occur as well, with the patient not wanting to see a particular visitor or any visitors at all, either due to some prior bad blood between them or not wishing to have anyone see them in such a vulnerable, incapacitated, or even embarrassing state.
Examples
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Comic Books
- I Kill Giants: As part of the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane plot, Barbara perceives a shadowy monster residing on the second floor of her house and refuses to go up there for most of the story. It eventually gets revealed that this "monster" is actually her terminally ill mother, who she's been too scared to visit. She fights the giants (symbolically or literally) because she thinks they are responsible for the illness, representing her inability to accept her mother's death. After confronting the Titan, she finally goes up to see her.
Fanfic
- Kedabory's Elmore Chronicles: In "The Disease", Boris Small refuses to come to the hospital and donate blood to his estranged younger sibling Sybil, citing their lack of contact and Sybil not attending his wedding or meeting his daughter Sophie as reasons why. Gumball and Darwin instead rope Sophie into coming with them, and while it turned out that they didn't actually need a blood donation, Sybil is nevertheless delighted to finally meet their niece.
Films — Animated
- Invoked in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker when Bruce Wayne visits Tim Drake in hospital after the Joker is defeated. It's treated as a big deal, as it represents his willingness to finally swallow his pride and reach out to his former sidekick note . Barbara Gordon, being the former Batgirl, is also present and both she and Drake immediately recognise the significance of Bruce's presence.
- Onward: In one scene, Barley talks about one of the few memories he has of his and Ian's father, Wilden, who died of a terminal illness. Barley mentions that as a kid, he tried to visit his dad in the hospital to say goodbye to him, but was too afraid to do so because of all the machines that Wilden was hooked up to. Unlike some of the other memories Barley has of his father, this is shown to be one that he's far more reluctant to talk about.
Literature
- The Baby-Sitters Club: In "Claudia and Mean Janine," Claudia's beloved grandmother Mimi has a stroke. When Claudia first goes to see Mimi in the hospital, Mimi is still blank-faced and hooked up to all sorts of machines, and Claudia runs out crying. She does try again later and even finds a way to communicate with Mimi.
- In one edition of Chicken Soup for The Teenage Soul, the story "Role Reversal" had a college-aged woman visit her mother, who was in a devastating car accident. After being briefed by the doctor of her injuries and her grandmother requesting her not to cry in her presence, she tries to visit with her mother, but the state of her and valid realization that she could die soon overwhelms her, and she runs out the room to cry.
- In The Moon of Gomrath, set in rural England, the older countrywoman Bess Mossock displays a fear of doctors and hospitals. Part of this might be rural superstition - she would believe a hospital is a place where the terminally ill go to die - but part might be down to the time and place. In England in The '50s, Bess would belong to the generation that came before the NHS, where Britain had an almost American approach to healthcare - it had to be paid for and it didn't come cheap. People would defer medical attention for as long as possible, deterred and frightened by the cost. note
Live-Action TV
- Cobra Kai: Tory refuses to visit her boyfriend Miguel in the hospital during Season 3, out of a combination of guilt for causing the brawl at the school that put him there in the first place and lingering resentment towards him for cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend Sam.
- Degrassi: The Next Generation:
- After Jimmy returns to school in "Eye of the Tiger", it's discovered that his supposed best friend Spinner never once visited him in the hospital, citing a weak excuse of being busy. While he tries to make amends with him, he eventually confesses why he never visited; he and Jay lied to Rick about a paint and feathers prank they pulled on him, saying it was Jimmy who did it and which caused him to get shot and subsequently paralyzed. The confession makes Jimmy and the rest of the school to turn on them and both of them eventually get expelled.
- Discussed and played straight with Terri being hospitalized after a serious head injury caused by Rick. Whereas Ellie is sympathetic, she states that since the two girls didn't know each other well, it would be morbid of her to visit, Ashley actively avoided visiting her, and once she did, she was so freaked out by her injury that she stayed away.
- Desperate Housewives: Gabby is resistant to making plans to visit Lynette in the hospital when Lynette has cancer. At first, Lynette attributes this to Gabby being selfish, as she often is. Gabby explains that when her father was dying of cancer, her mother forced her to put on a happy face when visiting him, and Gabby was resistant to repeating the experience. Lynette is actually relieved to hear this because everyone else's fake smiles were making her uncomfortable, so they agreed to Gabby visiting and not being fake with her.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In "Home Is Where The Heart Attack Is", Carlton initially is terrified of seeing his father after his heart attack over being afraid of seeing him with tubes up his nose. He does soon see him, especially since he was asking for him.
- The Golden Girls: In "Great Expectations," Blanche refuses to see her latest beau after his heart attack, to his and the other girls' chagrin. She does eventually see him, only to learn that he had rekindled his relationship with his former wife, who was there for him in his time of need.
- In another episode, Dorothy is scheduled for surgery for a Morton's neuroma, a kind of benign nerve tumor that has been causing her intermittent foot pain and interfering with her daily activities (including an upcoming dance recital). She reveals herself to have a phobia of hospitals that started when she was five—she'd had an emergency tonsillectomy and circumstances kept both of her parents from being there, and she never got over the childhood fear. Her doctor's casual discussion of all that could go wrong doesn't help, either. A conversation with her hospital roommate, who's in for her second mastectomy and is facing it stoically despite her very real fear, snaps her out of it. (And, to top it off, this time Sophia makes sure to stay by her daughter's side until she wakes up from the anaesthetic.)
- Discussed in the Lifetime TV movie Hunger Point; after Shelly's month-long hospital stay to treat her eating disorder, her overbearing mother argues with her distant father, who called her out on her treatment of her and older sister Frannie, that he never once visited her. The stress from their hectic home life, coupled with her still untreated eating disorder and other mental issues, drives her to commit suicide that very night.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In "Beast", the mother of a suspect explains that when she tried to visit her long-deceased, favorite daughter in the hospital who was sick with a then-unknown disease which left her with horrible lesions on her face (later revealed to be caused by dioxin poisoning), she was terrified of the state of her ravaged beauty and only visited her once.
- Malcolm in the Middle: Malcolm spends an entire episode finding excuses not to go visit his friend Stevie at the hospital. He finally visits him in the last scene and acts like a jerk, but Stevie is still glad that at least he did come.
- Miami Vice: Both Gina and Switek have this in "A Bullet For Crockett". Whereas the former is a wreck since the last time she and Crockett spoke was a silly argument over paperwork, the I.V. in Crockett's arm reminds latter of when he found poor Zito dead a year earlier under similar circumstances. Gina ultimately stays, but Switek is rattled enough to depart only moments later.
- Downplayed on an episode of One Born Every Minute. The father of one of the subject's baby refused to come to the hospital for the birth because he "doesn't do hospitals", but the real story was between the two grandmothers, who wound up having a fistfight after the birth, leading to one of the most infamous moments of the series.
- Discussed in an early One Tree Hill episode. After Lucas is left in a coma after a car accident, best friend Haley didn't want to see him since their last conversation was a fight, and she stated that "If I go in there, I'll start crying, and I know that I won't be able to stop."
- Saved by the Bell: The New Class: One episode has Rachel terrified to see her boyfriend Ryan, who was getting his appendix out, due to being young and sick with tonsillitis as a child and losing her own beloved grandmother years earlier. When she tries to go into his hospital room to see him, they make eye contact (and he was happy to see her), and she initially runs away scared, but she soon gets the courage to be with him before the surgery.
- Sadly defied in the TV movie Secret Cutting (also known as Painful Secrets). While the protagonist wants to see her Only Friend, who was beaten into a coma by her mother's boyfriend, her narcissistic and emotionally abusive mother refuses to allow her, citing that she feels that seeing this person would "upset" her and says that she's going to stay with her until she calms down. After a later suicide attempt puts her into the same hospital as her now-recovering friend, she's able to to order her mother to leave her hospital room.
- The S Club 7 Christmas Special: After Paul, Hannah, and Bradley get into a car accident, Tina is at first reluctant to visit them due to the vague nature of how their injuries were explained to them. Whilst they were all banged up and Paul momentarily lost his memory, they eventually recovered.
- Scrubs: When Dr. Cox's best friend (and ex-brother-in-law) gets leukemia, he is determined to stay positive. When Ben's test results come back and Cox realizes just how bad his odds of survival are, he gives up and decides to avoid Ben. He changes his mind eventually.
- In The Trouble With You Lilian, Lilian has to visit the hospital for a check-up in "Outside Patients" and is so nervous that she decides to buy a new hat first.
- The Wire: After Kima is shot by two Barksdale hitmen, Jimmy McNulty refuses to see her in the hospital since he blames himself for the unfortunate turn of events. While it's true that Jimmy kickstarted the Barksdale investigation to stick it to his bosses, Barksdale is nonetheless a legitimate threat and the other members of the detail feel it was worth sticking their necks out to get him and his gang off the streets. When Jimmy finally visits Kima, she calls him a bitch and says her only regret was not using enough tape to secure the gun that she stashed.
Video Games
- Batman: The Telltale Series: After the mayoral debate if you choose to rescue Selina, she will join you at the hospital to visit Harvey but will leave before seeing him. This is due to a combination over guilt at the wounds Harvey suffers if you choose to save her but also due to the character's habit of building walls and not showing vulerability.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss: The ending of Western Energy sees the Stolas badly hurt and hospitalised following an abduction. In the aftermath, Stolas has a brief text conversation with Blitzo, inviting Blitzo to visit him in the hospital where he is expected to stay for some time. Still not past their mutual awkwardness following the disaster at Ozzie's and shocked that the Nigh-Invulnerable Stolas can get hurt, Blitzo begins to type a response but soon gives up, leaving Stolas on read.
Western Animation
- Subverted in Doug episode "Doug's Shock Therapy". When disliked vice principal Mr. Bone is hospitalized for unknown reasons, Doug unintentionally gets roped into taking a get well card tree to him, and while he states that hospitals give him the willies and he doesn't want to visit Mr. Bone, especially since he had no idea what he had, note he goes to drop off the cards anyway.
- Human Resources (2022): When Sara's mother went to the hospital due to complications with cancer, Sara assured herself (with the help of her Logic Rock, Van) that she would get better and come home from the hospital within a week, likely because she didn't want to see her mother in that state. Her mother died in the hospital, and Sara feels so much guilt from not visiting her that she repressed all memories of her mother and refuses to talk about her.
- South Park: In "Kenny Dies", Kenny is dying from a muscular disease and Stan is reluctant to head into the hospital to see him, fearful of the state he'll be in. Thanks to Chef, he eventually gets the courage to go in... only to find that he was too late and Kenny had already passed on. To twist the knife further, Kenny's final words were asking where Stan was.
- X-Men: The Animated Series: At the start of The Phoenix Saga, after Jean is taken to the hospital, Beast suggests he and Wolverine can visit her there. Wolverine says he doesn't care for hospitals, as the last time he was on an operating table, it didn't turn out so well and pops his claws for emphasis.
