The ER

I had plans to go to the Alabama/LSU game. The only problem I had was that it was my weekend with Luke (my son). I called Jana on Thursday and explained the situation, and to my surprise, she recommended that I come and get him Thursday afternoon, keep him that night, hang out with him on Friday, bring him home Friday night and then get him again this weekend. Damn I thought. What’s gotten into her other than large amounts of dick?

Not wanting to risk her turning into the Incredible Bitch, I ran on over and picked up my boy.

When you are a single dad with a 9 month old, there’s really not a whole lot for you to do. Normally, after I pick him up, I will go by McDonalds, get him a chicken nugget happy meal and take him to my house. Then the standards are him watching one or two Baby Einstein videos (those things are amazing, btw. You parents with young children should invest in them if you haven’t already), an hours worth of Peek-A-Boo and his favorite; Superfly.

Superfly is really quite simple. It involves me sitting Luke on the couch, he then jumps off onto my chest/stomach and I act like he has absolutely destroyed me. He could play this game all day and night, but eventually my chest starts hurting so I will drag out an air mattress and let him jump off onto that. Its name, of course, derives from the great Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka.

As we were playing, my phone rang, so I jumped up to answer it and left Luke sitting on the floor. It was a friend and he was going over our plans for Saturday:

A. Leave around 9
B. Buy beer
C. Drink beer

That was pretty much our plan.

We were talking about some other things to do once we got there and then I hear CRASH!!!! and then very loud scream-crying. In all my time with Luke, not once has he ever been able to climb up on the couch by himself, but apparently, he has now learned how to do just that. While I was having my phone conversation, he had climbed up on the couch and decided to do a nose dive onto the floor.

He was lying on the floor screaming his head off. Holy shit! What do I do?

I picked him up and tried to console him but his crying just got worse and it wasn’t some little cry, he was screaming like he was being slowly tortured by the Vietkong. I walked him outside and was able to get him somewhat calmed down by calling up my dog, but his crying never really stopped and I noticed he was favoring his left arm. I tried to feel it to see if I could feel any broken bones, but that just made his crying worse.

What am I going to do? I thought, so I did what any single-dumb-father would do, I called my mom. She told me that I needed to take him to the ER and that I probably needed to call Jana. What the hell do you know? I’m not calling that crazy bitch and telling her I just broke our sons arm. She is always telling me that I play too rough with him, and I damn sure don’t want that lecture. With that, I decided that I would take Luke to the ER on my own.

I fumbled around, managed to get a bag ready, got him loaded into the car and off we went.

We got to the ER in record time. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that crowded and Luke had stopped crying for the most part, so I thought this would be a quick visit…..boy was I wrong.

I got him signed in and then we sat down. About 3 minutes later, some piece of white-trash wearing a Confederate flag shirt that said Its not a redneck thang it’s the right thang, a pair of tattered blue jeans and a dumb look on his face comes staggering over to me telling me his sob story.

Me and my wife were in a car wreck……sumbitch my knee is killing me…..and she is over at that other hospital…..is my head bleeding?.......and I am at this hospital. It’s not but three…..I think I bit half my tongue off…..its not but three blocks that way and they won’t let me leave. Do you think you could give me a ride over there?

There was a hard liquor fog following him around which was mixed hippie stink. I told the guy that I was waiting to see a Dr. and that I couldn’t leave the ER. He started to get a little belligerent towards me. The only weapons I had was a Diego sippy cup, my car keys and an old Cosmo that I had rolled up. Thankfully, a police officer, one of the many I would see this night, came around the corner and Otis decided he would go beg for a ride somewhere else.

Shortly after that, I was called back to the area where you see a doctor. I’m sure it’s like most ER’s around the country: Several rooms closed off by sheets with a bed in each room.

Immediately, a really hot nurse caught my attention. She was wearing Alabama scrubs and even though she wasn’t wearing any makeup and her hair was in a ponytail, she was still very, very hot. The great thing about nurse scrubs is that you can always tell if a female nurse is a freak or if she is an Aunt Bea because the panty line is always visible. If you can see the granny-panty line, she is an Aunt Bea, but if you see a freak-line, or no line at all, it normally means she has a wild side to her. This nurse, Lilly, had no visible panty line and she had an ass that should of come with its own song; Salt Shaker by the Ying Yang Twins would by my choice. Damn! She was fine.

Despite the fact that I wanted to focus my energy on scoring with Lilly, I had to give all my attention to Luke. He wanted to play with everything in the room and over the last couple of months, I have heard some horror stories about staph infections and I didn't want to take him back to Jana with a broken arm plus an infection that could possibly kill him, so I was trying to keep him from touching anything. Thankfully, being the great father that I am, I came prepared; Plain M&M’s. Not one of those little pussy small packs, but one of those big bags that cost, like, $7. I whipped out the pack and in no time he was in my lap focusing all of his attention on downing a handful of the M&M’s.

This, of course, allowed me to focus some attention on Lilly. She was sitting out at the nurse’s station and she kept looking back in my direction, so I knew she wanted me. Unfortunately, there was a bipolar woman next door to me that was crying over the fact that they had apparently stuffed a muffler up her nose and it was hurting. She had this cough that sounded like a cat trying to pass a hairball and she was saying that she was about to puke. Please! Somebody help me! It hurts! I’m gonna puke!. And with that, she puked and she puked and she puked and then she puked some more. There’s blood in it! Oh, God. There’s blood in it! I'm dying.

While Puke Woman was over there spilling her guts in the floor, a stab victim was wheeled in. I came to learn that he had been stabbed in the neck by his girlfriend and his mom thought she had hit his “jigular vein” because he was “bleeding a lot” and it was “really dark”.

Of course, with all of this ongoing, Luke was not a high priority on the emergency list, and honestly, he wasn’t even acting like he was hurting anymore. He still wasn’t using his arm, but he wasn’t crying.

The next 4 hours were probably the longest 4 hours of my life. Chaos was all around me, Luke had long periods of crying and I was really worried that someone was going to come in and shoot the place up. The only thing that helped me was the fact that Lilly kept coming into the room flirting with me. She brought me some Sprite for Luke, some Ruby Tuesday’s that she had ordered, some Tylenol for the excruciating headache that I developed and some much needed conversation.

I learned that she’s recently divorced, no kids, lives in an apartment, drives a Toyota Forerunner, likes to play racquetball and is fluent in Spanish.

At 1:30 am, after I had witnessed a fight between the girl that stabbed her boyfriend and his mother, got to hear Otis tear into a doctor over his jacket and saw a group of Mexicans throw a birthday party; I learned that Luke had no broken bones. They gave him some Motrin for the pain and told me that I should take him to his pediatrician if he kept acting like his arm was hurting. I did, however, walk out with Lilly’s phone # and plans for a date with her on Tuesday night.

to be continued