Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

E.R.

It's 2:30 in the morning. Eastern Time. I'm sitting in the E.R. It's fairly quiet. The doors to the outside world, rather cool tonight, whirr open and close, the security guard checking out the area every so often, grabbing a quick smoke, I imagine, just like some of the guys in high school.

An older, brown-suspendered gentleman, carrying his companion's purse, wheeled her in. Congestive heart failure, I guessed. Short, shallow breaths from the green oxygen tank, legs swollen way past mid-summer watermelon girth, and they whisked her away from her gentleman into the back, telling him to have a seat.

And he did, sitting too near to the father wearing a red and blue baseball cap with the 12-year-old, slightly chubby, groaning, curly-haired boy wearing a green pull-over, short-sleeved knit shirt with narrow yellow stripes. Too near, I say, because I moved to the children's waiting area, Winnie-the-Pooh open-mouthed on the cover of a book called "Christmas Days" across the blue all-weather carpet from me among a number of Fisher Price and toys and books stacked haphazardly in equi-sided cubicles.

I moved over here because of the fucking little brat's incessant moaning, holding his abdomen, getting up and sitting down, walking to the snack machine to check out the offerings. Little bastard. It’s two fucking thirty.

I ducked into the men's bathroom, something I hate to do in hospitals. The germs, you know, they cause infections and shit. But I needed to just get away from little fucker’s annoying moaning and plaintives to everyone that it hurt, including the 30-ish, lanky, blond-haired guy with a right eye that hadn’t seen the left hook coming, who sat at the far side of the waiting area. I knew that he could, even with one good eye, take the fucking bastard kid -- and the tanned girl with plaited, blonde hair, braces on her teeth, panther tattoo on her calf, agreed with me, catching my eye with a sneer, as did the older bleached-blond with smoker's sun-damaged skin sitting next to her. She had the used-up look of someone who had joined in once the beating had started in several mid-western biker bars.

The chubby little fucker brought his sick act into the god-damned bathroom. It was certainly possible that he could trip and end up with his head in the toilet. Yeah, that's the ticket. It would look like an accident. If only old left eye would stroll in, he would make a good witness. Hell, he would tell me to turn around and then do the deed himself; then he'd tell me to "Get security, Pops," which would annoy me even further. And I might get security or I might give him an overhand right to the other eye.

It was good left eye didn't join us in the bathroom. And I walked out, leaving the corpulent bastard to piss and moan. Little fucker. I expected him to follow me out. He did – without washing his hands – and he stood in front of the snack machine, mesmerized by the spiral wires, which could carry all kinds of goodies to his grubby, little hands, if only he had the money.

The nurse called out a name. The little bastard’s name, apparently, because he and his father, who removed his baseball cap, followed the nurse and disappeared, never to re-appear in my world.

Posted by Bill at July 13, 2007 12:12 PM