After grousing about the state of health insurance in this country, I was still convinced to go to the hospital and run some tests.\u00a0 I watched the flashing of the lights for a minute or two before the ambulance speeded off.\u00a0 The police were still looking for signs of the other car that hit me.\u00a0 I managed to collect myself well enough to not recommend sending in fewmets to forensics.<\/p>\n
Just what I needed, a night in Crazytown.<\/p>\n
Saturday night emergency rooms are a microcosm of madness.\u00a0 While I got high priority for the way I was rushed in, there’s still a lot of waiting and listening to the people behind the thin curtains they use as dividers here.\u00a0 Just by being quiet and listening you learn far more of the stories behind people’s intense moments of living than ever TV could bring.<\/p>\n
I was locked to one of those headboards.\u00a0 Which is OK at first, because they’re worried you’ll strain something.\u00a0 About minute thirteen you’re ready to walk out with a rib displaced and pushing through your chest because you can’t handle not being able to move your neck.\u00a0 About minute twenty-four you’re crying and calling for your mommy or anyone who would give you the option to roll onto your side.\u00a0 Let’s not talk about minute thirty-six.<\/p>\n
I was ready to call and prescribe painkillers for the lady across from me.\u00a0 She wasn’t in any pain, but she had six family members who were ready to punch out a nurse for making her wait for her test results.\u00a0 Wait, did I say painkillers?\u00a0 I meant tranquilizers.\u00a0 Look, let the professionals handle things.\u00a0 It takes time sometimes to find the answers, longer than a commercial break.\u00a0 The fellow beside me needed a lecture, not someone who spent time pursuing a medical degree.<\/p>\n
An interim wherein I was convinced I had died in the car crash and been taken by special route straight to purgatory later, I was let go.\u00a0 “Your X-rays are convincing,” the young doctor told me.\u00a0 He had a beautiful smile.\u00a0 He warned me that my muscles might seize up or something the next day and to take analgesics of a sort he recommended, “and, oh, fill out this paperwork that says what I just told you, and if you start bleeding from the eyes, that’s never a good thing.”<\/p>\n
Oh, and I got his number, in case this dating girls thing doesn’t work out for me.\u00a0 I thought for a moment that it was just that my insides looked impressive.<\/p>\n
I have to admit, I sang aloud for a few minutes while waiting for the taxi stand.\u00a0 I was giddy after being released.\u00a0 I did a few dance steps.\u00a0 I pointed.\u00a0 Somehow, in my heart, all taxi cab drivers are Beauregard, and I told him I only expected him to take me as far as the lobby.\u00a0 Apparently, he hadn’t seen “The Great Muppet Caper,” but he did think in his heart of hearts like Fozzie Bear did, in “The Muppet Movie,” that he “picked up a weirdo.”<\/p>\n
In a sense, Doloise was in the apartment.\u00a0 She was in all the neatly stacked books, in the new blooms of my plant, in the way I had set the couch at an angle so more than one person could watch TV, and in the way I had twice as many dishes drying in the dishwasher.\u00a0 Her physical presence, however, was not there, and now that my scattered wits were gathering, I was concerned.<\/p>\n
I remember thinking she had disappeared from the car before it had stopped spinning.\u00a0 I closed my eyes and concentrated on putting the memories in order.\u00a0 The impact.\u00a0 The sound of it was almost worse than the actual thump.\u00a0\u00a0 There was the light as the top of the car was drawn, the light from the Dragon’s claws, and the smell of its breath.<\/p>\n
It took Doloise in its claws.\u00a0 That was how my poor, addled brain saw it.\u00a0 She bespelled me, a protection of sorts as she was flown off…south.\u00a0 It had to be south.\u00a0 My ice cream would have ended up in the passenger’s seat.\u00a0 I missed the ice cream, I was worried about Doloise, but more, I begrudged having to call my insurance agency.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know if my policy covered acts of Dragon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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