I found myself at the emergency room this morning. And I mean early this morning. The trip there was only half the fun: the cab driver, ignoring instruction, dropped us off at the main entry of the hospital, which of course at 5:15am was closed. Imagine this: it's 5:15 in the morning, cold, drizzly, and the man, coughing more than breathing, fever, aches, chills, high blood pressure and pulse, staring at the locked doors as the cab drove away. (As Tori put, "I'm glad I undertipped him." So am I, sweetie.) As it turns out, the emergency room was over a block away, diagonally across the street from the main entry. So Tori (remember Tori? She exited the doctor's office the day before with the news she had an upper respiratory infection. So keep in mind: she's illin' too) and I, sick as dogs, wandered and wheezed about until we found the emergency room.
You'd think that at 5:15am, the place would be empty, and I'd get a doctor relatively quickly. You'd only be half correct: Tori and I were the only people in the waiting room, but it took over a half-hour for a nurse to call my name. In the meantime, Tori and I sat in the waiting room, watching CNN American Morning, a program so annoyingly puerile, it makes Good Morning America seem like C-SPAN. John Roberts boasted his best frowny face for the topic at hand, which was: the swine flu pandemic. Yes, I'm hacking out my lungs, feverish, sickly, and there's this 50-inch screen TV blaring the pandemic at me. The number of Americans sick with the flu just doubled! They're finding it in the Carolinas now! It could pop up EVERYWHERE!
In the middle of this lively special report, little Johnny Roberts brought in an expert who blithely informed the early-morning audience that those little face masks zillions of people have begun to wear on the telly don't really work; viruses are much smaller and can pass through the masks. I stared at Tori, mask on my face (provided by the emergency room) and sardonically coughed. At the front desk, one of the employees coughed violently, pulled out a mask, and clumsily put it on.
Finally, after what seemed to be years, a nurse called me over, took my blood pressure, and harangued me about not taking Motrin. "If you're in pain, why aren't you taking Motrin to make you feel better?"
"I was popping Advil," I mumbled.
"Oh. Well, that's the same chemical."
That's nice.
Over the next hour, the cute doctor, the really hot nurse, and the not-hot-at-all second nurse took a couple of chest x-rays, my blood, and gave me this cool tube which I could breathe in chemicals with. I inhaled the medicine, and exhaled out of the tube. With the steam coming out the other end, I looked like a half-naked Star Trek alien.
I made sure my worried wife was well-entertained. I tossed her my finest eyebrow flirtations, sang through my breathing tube, and complimented the fine, round ass belonging to the first (really hot) nurse. She was properly dismayed by my behavior, which was my way of telling her that I'm okay, and that people taking out my blood and x-rays and giving me chemicals to breathe in and my hacking copious amounts of infected phlegm into dozens of tissues was not getting me down. Married couples gradually develop a secret language during emergencies when oral communication isn't available, and I communicate through obnoxiousness.
The whole ordeal seemed to take longer than usual (I'm guessing they wanted to make damned sure I didn't have the swine flu), but eventually I was cleared to go home. My malady was what I had expected: bronchitis, an illness I've battled on and off since college, and is triggered whenever I get hit with a nasty cold, which I've suffered from for the past week. I was given antibiotics and an inhaler to open up my bronchial passages. Problem: I've never used an inhaler in my life, and I've rarely (if ever) smoked, so I have not a clue as to suck in chemicals from my mouth into my lungs. I'm doing my best. The way things are going, my tongue will never be congested again.
So that's my trip to the hospital. I'm still sick, my tongue is covered in steroid, and I have to go back to work tomorrow, no matter how sick I am. Anyone have a cool tube for me to breathe chemicals through?