Monday, October 03, 2005
I got soul but I'm not a soldier (yet)
So we're off to the emergency room. Naturally, my sister's car is no longer operational. Some idiot diconnected the battery. Neither Shelley nor her roommate can drive a stick, so we all pile into my dinky truck. I drive one and a half handed to the ER, sign in and wait and wait...and wait. Initially, there are around 10 people in the waiting room, by 10:00 pm, the place it paced. Out of things to do, I call my dad. I needed to talk to him anyway. We talk about careers, he still doesn't seem to get that I really don't care about chemicals. Being a Chem Engineer hired to optomize petroleum cracking or some other chemical process has zero appeal to me. He still believes I should keep my degree general, and he's right. However, as a graduate student I've got to pick something. Anyway, by 9:45 or so, we finally get to see a nurse. Now I'm waiting on an ER cot. The nurse (a rather good looking one I might add, her name was Callie) comes in and tells me she's going to have to give me some shots in my wound and "it's going to hurt like crazy for a few minutes." She suggests I hold on to my sister's hand. I mention that if it really does hurt, Shelley's hand would probably break were I to hold it. I ask if I could just scream like a little girl instead. A reponse shouts out from the adjacent cot, "NO screaming. The is an ER, not the delivery room." She wasn't being hostile or anything. I imagine she'd had a rough day too and decided not to ask her what was wrong. Two and a half hours and fourteen stitches later, I'm out of there. Were it not for a slightly amusing story, the whole night would have been a waste.