Friday afternoon we drove to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with my family. My dad limped to the door on an ankle that looked like he was smuggling a grapefruit under the skin, explaining that he had fallen down the attic stairs a few hours earlier. It took some doing, but we convinced him to go to the emergency room to have it checked out. Our mistake.
Upon arrival, we were told that there would be a two hour wait to see the doctor. Oh goody. Two hours in a waiting room filled with people who were hacking, sneezing, wheezing, whining, moaning and complaining. I wish we were that lucky.
Finding four seats together, we all sat down, and Tim, my mother and I all pulled out our ipods, intending to turn on, tune in and drop out. My father found a three day old newspaper and checked out the obits, looking to see how many of them had expired in the waiting room of the ER.
My sister, who was at a local fair, began texting me, so I turned over my ipod to my father, thinking a few games of Parking Lot would take his mind off his ankle, which he was still insisting was not broken. Being the anally logical person he is, I figured a game that consisted of moving cars around to free the one yellow car in the back would be right up his alley. Not even close.
"Why can't you move the cars sideways?" he grumbled, repeatedly trying to slide a limo across the screen.
Um, cause Henry Ford foolishly put wheels on cars that only had the ability to go forward and backward?
"This one is impossible," he growled, somewhere around move 287, still trying to push the offending cars sideways. Then, "I don't even know why we're here. It's only a sprain."
I knew we would never hear the end of it if it wasn't really broken.
On the other side of me was my mother, who was watching an old Judy Garland movie on her itouch, and periodically making comments like, "Boy, this place is crowded" and "Honestly, those people over there are soooo noisy", at the top of her lungs. I had to keep explaining that she was the one with the earbuds, and the rest of us could hear her just fine if she spoke in her normal "indoor voice". It really wasn't necessary to compete with the ambulance siren to see who could be louder.
Then there were the two girls across the room who had obviously mistaken this for the waiting room at the American Idol tryouts, and were serenading everyone with renditions of currents hits that made William Hueng sound like Placido Domingo. Even Paula would have been telling them to give it up.
Into this mix, about every fifteen minutes or so, a nurse would come into the waiting room with a clipboard and call out a name to which no one would respond. A beat. Call the name again. Another beat. Try once more. Finally, someone would say, "I think they already took that person back." A shrug. Last look around, as though the person they were paging might be playing hard to get and hiding under a sofa cushion, then they would amble off until it was time to come back in and call the next name to which nobody would respond. Way to stay on top of things, guys. Hey, if you can't find the elderly man with chest pain, you might want to check the maternity wing.
An hour or so into the fun and games, a nurse came in and gave my father a bright pink badge to wear, explaining that it was so that they could "track" his location. Yeah. Is that the same system you've been using to keep track of all the other patients? Because if it is, I gotta tell you it isn't working so well. Ever think of switching to Lojac?
Finally though, someone came out and called my father's name. Still grumbling and insisting that he didn't need to be at the hospital for a sprained ankle, he disappeared into the mysterious "back room".
Shortly thereafter, my sister arrived (she didn't want us to have all the fun) and managed to get into the back with my mom to see what was going on. At this point, we were all pretty much in agreement that if the ankle wasn't really broken, we would be subjected to such excruciatingly painful hours of , "I told you so", that it would make the last few look like a walk in the park. Hospitals and my dad do not make a good combo.
While I waited for them to come out, Tim continued his own personal ritual of the last two hours. He trekked back and forth between the emergency entrance where he could use his cell phone, the vending machines where he could buy me chocolate cupcakes and cookies and himself soda, and the bathroom where he could recycle the soda, using the chair next to me as a pit stop to get updated on the ankle.
It so happened that one of his brief visits coincided with Pat and my mother coming out with the news that the ankle was indeed broken, but that it was a clean break, easily set and easily mended. Learning that we would be spared endless haranguing by my father for taking him to the ER for nothing, we whopped and high-fived each other... much to the shock of the other people in the room. Apparently, it is not a normal reaction for people to be overjoyed when they learn a loved one has broken an appendage. Go figure.
Three hours after leaving, we pulled back into the driveway at the house with one broken ankle, one drained ipod battery, one drained cellphone battery and one newly-filled prescription for Vicodin which we were all eyeing with longing.
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