Sunday, June 20, 2010

Monday Attitude Adjustment Story (MAAS)



In MAAS 145, I left you where I had been escorted into the Emergency ward. I didn’t think the place was really that busy since they found a place for me right away. However, it wasn’t too long before I found out that Police Officers have a dry sense of humor. There were really only three other patients when I got there but I think all must have escaped from the Loony bin. One was a woman who was locked in a room walled with rubber padding who kept moaning “Why am I strapped to the bed?” and “Someone please let me loose”. I could hear the scuffling of a nurse’s shoes as one would drag herself into the room and sarcastically answer, “Like we told you before (sigh) not until your family comes”. The other two were both men. One was handcuffed to his bed and didn’t say too much; just every now and then would complain that he had to go home to feed his dogs. The other guy, I could hear but not see because the curtain blocked my view, but it sounded like he was traveling all over Emergency talking to any poor soul he could entrap into listening.
The nurse came and looked at my foot and then after vomiting profusely, tried to draw blood for testing. Why…I don’t know since my foot was leaking like a sieve, but after trying four times (twice in each arm) she called for the professional blood sucker. All this time, Sylvia was standing at the foot of my bed and even though there was a chair in the empty nook right across the aisle, she declined to sit down. Then the head vampire came in to use a drill bit on my arm that was made for digging the Chunnel. He got a blood sample (spilling a quart or so on the floor in the process) and attached an IV to the gaping hole. It was when the nurse came to take an EKG and had to move the curtain back that I saw why Sylvia had refused to sit down. I saw the cowboy who was galloping around and he was using the standard issue Hospital gown (you know the type that leaves your backside exposed to God and country). I couldn’t tell whether he was wearing extremely soiled jockey shorts or just had a hairy derriere, but I chided my loving wife of nearly 40 years and made her sit down, away from the floor show.
Now I was attached to a vitals monitoring device and a doctor, accompanied by a nurse, inspected my injured foot. He kept apologizing for the pain he must be causing me and I kept telling him that my neuropathy left me no feeling anyway…over and over as he washed it out and repeatedly to the nurse as well when she bandaged it tightly (being diabetic they did not want to take chances with stitches). All through this medical treatment I kept hearing the three stooges until I saw the female cast member walking by; tethered to a portable IV with her family trailing behind her. Once I saw her brood, I knew why she had to wait so long for them to arrive. It had to take them a long time to skedaddle down from the hills. I could hear the shackled man still pleading to be sent home because he had dogs to feed. Later I heard that they had to wait for his blood alcohol to dip below the legal limit or at least under the highest rating on the Richter scale. I also found out that he had a wife and about seventeen hundred children all below the age of 6, but he was only worried about his dogs. Maybe that was why he was so pickled in the first place. The Peep Show provider was gone by the time I was released and I asked where he had gone. I was told he wanted to walk home but he lived in Ravenna, so the police said he could only leave if someone would pick him up or pay for a taxi. He said that his wife had left him taking his car and he had spent all his money at the bar. The staff quickly too up enough money to pay his way to Canada and instructed the cab driver to do so. All in all a very interesting trip. Oh, I almost forgot…since Sylvia couldn’t smoke on Hospital property and there is no smoking allowed in our car, Sylvia pulled into the first parking lot to smoke a cigarette…and discovered she had left them at home. Being the heartless, cruel scum that I am, I laughed hysterically all the way home.


Next week's 06-28-2010 (#147) title: TBD

No comments:

Post a Comment