One friday evening, when I was chilling with my workmates, I got a call from my mom. Could I come over and drive her to the hospital, it it’s not too much trouble?
It turned out to be a kidney stone. Not life-threatening, but incredibly painful. Of course, I got there as fast as I could, abusing traffic laws all the way. I got Mom to the local ER, which on a weekend night was a zoo. Got her a wheelchair and an ice pack, and then waited in the triage line.
Mom was 4’11” on her tallest day, and to use one of my favorite expressions, was the kind of Southern lady who could tell you to go to hell so sweetly that you’d look forward to the journey. She raised me. And here she was, doubled over and barely able to whimper.
At one point, a young woman walked up to the desk and started yelling because she had seen people who came n after her admitted before her. The young woman was not in apparent distress, and was nursing what appeared to be a sprained wrist. And she was trying to cut in front of my mom, who was doubled over in unbearable agony.
“Bitch,” I said, “This is not a deli. It is not first-come, first-served. Unless you are bleeding from both eyes, I don’t want to hear another f’ing word from you.”
Actually, I said that in my head. What I did in the real world was stand a few feet away, fold my arms, and glare. Don’t underestimate. I can bring a lot of glare. Mom got a lot of antibiotics, a decent measure of painkillers, and a metal screen to catch the stone. The assholes in the ER are let to wallow in their own wretchedness. I can’t avenge everything at once.
idiots and welfare recipients abound in the er with unbearable pain from papercuts.