I've been thinking about all the people I've met in and out of hospitals and care facilities over the last five years.  a few stand out more than the others.  First and foremost in my mind is juan*, who was my dad's roommate at a hospital in midtown.. Honestly, I thought he was about 19 when we were first in there - he had a large tumor around his jaw, so it obscured his face a little bit, but he definitely looked like a teenager - slender with thick black curly hair.  After we had been there for a few days I found out he was in his early 50s, and was suffering from the advanced stage of AIDS.  His immune system wasn't protecting him at all at that point and he was pretty sick.  No one ever came to see him for the time that we were there (I don't know, like two weeks?).. toward the end of our stay he was transfered to the icu and his twin sisters came to be with him.  One night when I was going to the diner in the middle of the night I asked him if he wanted anything and he asked for a chocolate shake (the thick, ice creamy diner style).. seemed like he hadn't had one in a long time.
The next roomate my dad had at a different manhattan hospital was a guy who was definitely a little worse for wear.  It wasn't clear exactly what was up with him medically, but he had definitely spent a lot of time in that particular hospital.  In the middle of the night he would ring the nurse and when she would ccome over the speaker to ask what he needed, he would ask for a sandwich and a soda or something like that.  He came in with a full beard and while he was there, showered multiple times a day, shaved and got his laundry done.  One weekend when i was in there he was on his phone telling the person on the other end of the line to buy and sell - he spent about an hour trading stocks.  My mom and I were in there talking and she mentioned audibly that it was Sunday.  A minute later he was telling the person on the other end of the line that, well, it was the weekend so obviously he would have to make these trades on monday morning. 
That same hospital stay the guy in the next room was some sort of prisoner or something because there was a cop outside his door 24 hours a day.  The cops flirted shamelessly with the nurses as the room was directly across from the nurse's station.
One of my dad's later roomates was a poet who had grown up in manhattan.  He had been a soldier at some point and wasn't public about being a poet because people would tell him it was a lady's job.  He gave us a hardcover copy of his book.
*names have been changed