Friday, March 6, 2009

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.

I ended up hanging out in the ER the other night for a few hours and I actually had a pretty good time. My mom had a fall and it is the policy of her assisted living place that you have to go to ER if you faceplant, which she did. When I got there, I pretty much new she was not mortally wounded. The ER was very full and so we did not have a curtained “room”. We ended up in the hall for about six hours. She was in a gurney and I was either standing next her or at the foot of the bed, sitting in a chair. At one point I put an earbud in one of her ears and one in mine and we sang along to Strawberry Fields Forever. But, they didn’t even really do anything for her. It was like we were going through the motions of healthcare, like a performance with no finale. Just sitting in my chair for half an hour, I understood why. They had a lot of more intense shit on their hands than my bruised mom. There was the guy who had apparently stepped in a lot of glass. He was also lying in the hallway. He kept yelling, “I’m not drunk”! Dude, if you are in the ER at midnight on a Sunday yelling about how drunk you are not? Um, you’re totally fucking wasted. Then there was the 22 year old who was curled up in a fetal position on the gurney with his arms wrapped around his head, weeping. He kept wailing, “I took some drugs”. The orderly wheeling him around was trying hard not to laugh. There was also another old man who had not eaten in days and lived alone. They were trying to find somewhere for him to go. That was sad. About every 20 minutes or so a very exasperated voice came over the loudspeaker saying, "I need an environmental waste crew member in room 6". Whatever was going on there required multiple cleanups. I just put my ipod on and watched the parade roll by. I wonder if people ever hang out there. Are there ER groupies? It’s pretty great people watching, as good as the courthouse. I know I need to get a life. I have been known to read the dictionary and the phone book. Seriously.