At the Hospital, Again

Out of all the things Kelley had told me, she’d never mentioned that she was deathly afraid of bugs.  But perhaps that’s too presumptuous.  Maybe it wasn’t the cicada itself but rather the fact it’d ejected its head from its body like a Rock’em Sock’em Robot.  So, that’s how I found myself riding in the back of an ambulance and heading to the hospital for the second time in under a week. 

The trip from DRIP to the hospital took less than ten minutes, but ten minutes was more than enough time for Seamus, the pouty EMT riding in the back with me, to rattle on about his work relationship with Mike and Carl, the two EMTs in the front cabin.  Among the three of them, Seamus was the most junior and, as such, was conscripted into his role as the trunk monkey, forever forbidden to ride shotty, let alone drive the hulking wagon.  “They think they’re such hot shit,” he said, “ever since they saved that guy on the golf course.”  Well, turned out, while finishing a round of golf one weekend, Mike and Carl had come across a fairly inebriated and sunburnt individual who also happened to be in the early stages of anaphylactic shock after having been stung on the jugular by a bee.  They drove straight onto the eighteenth green (ruining it for over a month) and shoved away the guy’s buddy who, by the looks of it, was playing Whac-A-Mole rather than performing CPR.  As Mike and Carl began their triage, the buddy began cursing himself for what was supposed to have been an innocent prank—taking his pal’s EpiPen and hiding it but forgetting where once the tenth double transfusion hit—and now he watched in horror as his pal’s bright red and fleshy face slowly turned a suffocating shade of purple, which was when Mike grabbed a 3-wood from a nearby bag and smashed it on the ground, decapitating it into a shiv.  Meanwhile, Carl used both hands to restrain the guy’s head, yelling at the buddy to, please, shut the fuck up, and then Mike stood over him like a soldier over an enemy and bayoneted the sharp end of the crude surgical instrument right into his throat, not realizing how much pressure was needed to puncture someone’s trachea with a beheaded golf club—one of those things you’ll never know until you try it, I guess—but he eventually felt the outer skin give way, followed by the cartilaginous tube.  Carl then shouted for someone in the crowd of stunned onlookers to go get a straw, a call that was answered not by the fucking idiot of a buddy who’d hidden his pal’s EpiPen but by a meek teenage girl who’d been too terrified by what she’d just witnessed to press the club bartender on whether they had anything bigger than the little cocktail straws, so that’s what she came back with, a fistful of them, and Mike, knowing there wasn’t much time, bunched them together and shoved them into the little hole he’d made, granting the poor fucker access to some much-needed oxygen.  Long story short, the guy lived, and not even a week later he was back on the golf course with his buddy shooting triple bogeys, and Mike and Carl were heroes among the crew—notwithstanding their rather unorthodox methods. 

“Now they think they’re these paragods,” Seamus concluded. 

Anyway, we eventually pulled into the emergency department garage.  Mike and Carl came around the back, opened the doors, and popped Kelley out on the stretcher.  I glanced over at Seamus, but he was staring at the side wall, twisting his hands, swearing under his breath—clearly staying put—so I jumped out and silently followed behind Mike and Carl as they rolled the lovely and comatose Kelley towards the elevator.  Neither one of them batted an eye as I hopped on just before the doors slid closed.  A quick ride, a couple beeps, and then the doors opened up onto the floor of the emergency department, which was when Mike—or Carl; I realized then that I didn’t know who was who—nodded to Kelley on the stretcher and asked if I was a relation.  Like a buffoon, and still a bit drunk from the dozen or so jumbo frozen margaritas, I blurted out that she was my girlfriend, and both EMTs—didn’t need to know who was who this time—hit me with these identically incredulous looks that all but said You? and With her? and Are you fucking kidding us?  Well, I was starting to see what ole Seamus had been on about, the haughtiness of these two!  Sure, I don’t think Kelley would’ve labeled us as an item (yet!), but Mike and Carl certainly didn’t know any better, so those two could fuck right off.  But whether or not they believed me was immaterial, as one’s status as a boyfriend or girlfriend evidently was not enough to allow you back with the patient, and Carl—or Mike—flagged down a passing nurse to usher me away to the waiting room.  The last I saw of Kelley was her being wheeled away by the two pricks, like overgrown toddlers at a grocery store with a shopping cart. 

In the waiting room, the usual assortment of magazines was scattered among the side and center tables.  I picked up a Men’s Health, the big, bold font on its front cover promising five sneaky tips for TONED LEGS and a FIRM BUTT.  I flipped through a couple of the pages, unsure whether the invisible film coating them was Lysol spray or a supercolony of bacteria, when I looked to my left and noticed an older gentleman giving me the stankiest of stink eyes.  Like I said, I was still a bit sloshed, and the utter disrespect from Mike and Carl had put me on the defensive, so I straight up asked him what he was looking at, that if he wanted a read of my magazine all he had to do was ask because, sure, the old gangly coot looked to be in dire need of some toning and firming up himself.  He simply scoffed, shook his head, and went back to reading his newspaper.  I closed the magazine and frisbeed it onto the table, which was when the old man spoke up, saying something about “metrosexuals” and wondering aloud what had happened to his beloved city.  I was thoroughly drained from my outburst, so I left it alone, let him have that as the last word.  I mean, it was the least I could do for him because, aside from the hunched back and the wrinkled wattle dangling from his neck, the old turkey appeared to be in relatively okay physical health, so yeah, if he wasn’t in here for himself, then it was probably because his white-feathered hen of a wife had swallowed her dentures or had slipped and fallen in the bathtub.  Plus, on top of all that, it was getting close to 4 p.m., the poor geriatric fucker was probably starving, and God forbid he was in here for another hour—one of the nurses would have to fetch him a blanky and a pillow and a nice warm glass of Ensure. 

And about an hour had passed until a nurse walked in.  I’d correctly assumed that the old fart would fall asleep, but he shot up out of his chair when he heard the door open, an instinctual response that indicated this wasn’t his first rodeo in the hospital waiting room, and I felt pretty lousy when I saw the worried look on his face because, in it, I could see that he was desperate for news.  The nurse, however, had come to retrieve me, and I felt even lousier as I watched the old man slowly sink back into the chair.  Our eyes connected briefly, and I tried to convey to him some wordless and encouraging apology, some unspoken truce, but with the speed and venom of a rattlesnake he struck and snapped my olive branch and told me to go fuck myself.  The nurse heard this and whisked me away and, once we were in the hallway, told me not to worry about the old codger back there, a Mr. Delaney, who, together with Mrs. Delaney, would find themselves in the hospital on a weekly basis due to their insistence on living lives more suitable to teenagers than septuagenarians—this week’s injury: a broken pinky finger on Mrs. Delaney after she and her husband had taken a spill on their tandem bike.  I wondered if this was some sort of HIPAA violation, but I appreciated her explanation, if you could call it that.  

Anyway, she led me back to see Kelley, and imagine my surprise when I walked in and discovered that, not only did she have a roomie, but that said roomie was the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge—who apparently hadn’t been discharged following his bone-choking escapade (where were Mike and Carl when you needed them?).  He was awake and chipper, and he raised both of his arms and shouted, “Sterling!”

To my surprise, Kelley did the same.  “Sterling!”

I greeted them both and asked how they were doing.  Rev. Al, no longer speaking solely in proverbs, confirmed that he’d regained his eyesight completely—“It worked Sterling!  The miracle of St. Anvil of Severny Island!  Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”—and Kelley said that she didn’t really remember anything after walking into DRIP and ordering the first of the jumbo frozen margaritas.  Whether that was a side effect of the syncopal episode or just a minor blackout from the booze, I couldn’t tell, but I was pulverized by a breaking wave of nausea, on top of it a fat boogie boarder of anxiety that if that was all Kelley remembered, then the awesome time we’d shared was irretrievably one-sided.  I kicked and fluttered and fought to get my head back above the waves by thinking that at least she’d remembered my name, so all hadn’t been lost, Hallelujah!  But before I knew it, the nurse had come back in and, like a prison guard during visiting hours, said that my time was up, that Kelley and Al needed a little more rest.  Kelley, though, sent me off with a little wink, which was basically Pamela Anderson in Baywatch, meaning my sorry ass had been pulled out of the waves and dragged back onto dry land where I was now enjoying a refreshing piña colada.  All things considered, that was better than the stereotypical first kiss concluding a first date.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten outside that I remembered I didn’t have a ride, but it was almost as if I was a prince in a fairy tale—riding high from Kelley’s wink—because it was right then that my chariot arrived, which was really just an ambulance.  In the driver’s seat: Seamus.

“Get in,” he said.