Hospital Emergency Room

 

The tumble seemed to go on forever, a bit like a slow-motion film, but it was only three stairs. It left me bleeding with my head nearly under the dining room table.

Three SAMU people, two men and a woman, arrived quickly with their medical bags and packed me into the ambulance for the trip to Perpignan hospital. The youngest sat next to me and we talked about his recent move back to Catalonia (a lot of locals think of themselves more as Catalonian than French), how he and his girl friend of seven years are saving to buy a house before having children.

Before they pulled away Rick handed me my wallet with identity and insurance papers, telephone, and two New Yorkers. For long emergency room waits, it is good to have reading matter if not a library.

As I was being handed over to the Urgence (emergency room) staff I heard one nurse say how they had almost nobody yesterday and now they had 65. I was grateful for The New Yorkers. Every cubicle was occupied and gurney with waiting patients filled the free space.

There was a man moaning in pain. 

A woman probably in her sixties, overweight with her frizzy hair in a bun. It was colored very light blond with long roots. A nurse snapped at her to be quiet. She wasn't and for the next seven hours I could hear cries and whines. Eventually she even marched around the emergency room and the corridor carrying her saline solution still whining and crying.

A man who could have played Rasputin in any Russian period piece was rolled in. His T-shirt was up to his nipples and his stomach was like a huge washtub of bread dough that had been pock marked. Sometime during the next couple of hours, two security men came in and talked to the Rasputin-wantabe. I couldn't hear what they were saying. Darn it.

It was five hours before I was rolled into exam room 12 and three hours after that, the doctor arrived. I had almost finished one New Yorker. He was from Morocco but had been in Saudi Arabia before taking the job in France three months before. He spoke French and English. I understood his French better, and he understood my English better. He liked it when I said Shukran.

It has taken me almost a year to get my hair where I want it to be. Hearing the snip-snip-snip of the scissors was not a happy experience. I realized that my hair was also blood-soaked and the thought I was back as a red-head flashed through me mind. Vanity.

He gave me four small shots of anesthesia before starting the stitches. He liked that I said it felt like mosquito bite, a baby mosquito. He repeated that several times.

A male nurse arrived for a tetanus shot maybe after another hour but within 15 minutes I was rolled down the corridor for my brain scan.

By now, the exam rooms were all occupied and patient-filled gurneys formed a stationary parade in the corridor. One man in his early 20s with an athlete's body had a T-shirt that read, "Papa Chat."

From an exam room, a man called Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame with a variety of intensity from whispers to desperation screams. A nurse did go in, but the Madames continued while she was there and after she left. Later he switched to calling "Lola" and something that sounded like "I have," which I couldn't figure out.

I fell asleep. 

By seven the Moroccan doctor came to tell me my scan was normal (whew) and he would prepare the paperwork so I could go home. 

I called Rick on a phone that was down to 2%. I knew it would take time for him to come. 

I got the message on my phone now at 1% that he was in the hospital, but I had no idea where. I walked to Urgence receptionist. She pointed to the patient info area, but said I needed the papers. 

As I waited for the doctor to finish processing, one of the nurses, a young male offered me coffee.

The male nurse who gave me my tetanus shot said, "She probably wants tea."

"You must think by my accent, I'm English, but I'm Swiss. I know I don't sound Swiss."  

He laughed in agreement.

Some 19 hours after I entered the hospital, the receptionist showed me where I could find my husband. I don't think he ever looked so beautiful. Our communications had been limited by my rapidly reduced battery on my phone.

I know their are staff shortages and if I were having a heart attack, the response would have been faster. Those shortages must add to the sharp tones of the nurses. 

In the car on the way home, I commented that it would have been nice like on the early ERs George Clooney had been one of the doctors.

Rick pointed out he was, on the back of one of The New Yorkers.

Check out my husband's dueling blog at https://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.com/

 

Unemployment

 

 

Sixty years ago,

a typesettter,

loved linotype

smells of hot lead,

click-clack of letters

falling into line.

Lines into blocks,

Blocks into pages.

Each day

he read his paper,

letter by letter,

words spelled right

giving news to the world.

Sick or well

he struggled to work

owed it to his boss,

owed it to his readers

owed it to his family.

 

A machine replaced him.

He couldn’t understand

what he’s done wrong or

why his wife had to

work at Woolworth’s

straightening yarn and lipsticks.

 

Downsized,

Americans say today.

Thousands of miniature people

hiding under leaves

sitting on mushrooms

ducking birds of prey

less dangerous than

full-sized accountants.

The downsized wait

to be full sized again

while shareholders smile.

 

 

The English aren’t downsized.

They are made redundant.

The du dant beat

of the word

is unnecessary

as they’ve become

to the work force.

They aren’t redundant

to families

to banks

who mortgage their homes

and hold the balance of

VISA and MasterCard,

being told they

need these things

by the same people who’ve

made them redundant.

 

The French word is pretty.

Chômge. Show Marge.

As if Marge

needs to be shown

what life is like

without the respect

a paycheck brings.

She knows.

Nov1 Flash Fiction Cinnamon

 

November is the month of FlashNano2022. Each day the participants will create a flash fiction piece --  a story under 1000 words to a prompt. Today's prompt was cinnamon.

She would always think of divorce and cinnamon together.

Her parents had always fought. When she was smaller, they never fought in front of her, but once she was a teenager, they never waited until she was in her room behind a closed door. They just let it rip.

She thought most of their fights stupid: A dish left in the sink, the lawn needing cutting triggering a letter from the homeowners association, that kinda thing. Lately their topics seemed to escalate to something more serious such as how many nights her father worked late, the fact her mother had taken on too many shifts at the hospital, and money, more and more often the fights were about money.

She had read that kids often blamed themselves for their parents problems, but she had never come up as a fight topic.

At least they weren’t violent, although once her father had thrown a bowl of tomato soup on the floor because there was too much basil and he said after 17 years of marriage, her mother should know he doesn’t like basil. And coriander.

Even if she weren’t the cause of their fights, maybe she could make it better, back to the old days when there were almost no fights or at least hidden ones. They ate supper together, did things on weekends like apple picking in the fall, or hiking in the forest just outside of town, making snowmen, watching movies with popcorn … things families did.

Sundays, when things had been better, her mother always made cinnamon rolls from scratch for breakfast. Waking to that smell of the baking rolls was always a treat. Papa would have gone for the Sunday papers. She would read the funnies while she waited for the rolls to bake.

Her mother never kept her recipes secret. They were in a card file in a metal box decorated with fruits. Before her parents came home from work, she gathered all the ingredients. When she found the cinnamon bottle, it had just enough for the rolls. She thought if she cut the recipe in half, there would be enough for each of them to have one roll and she could use the extra cinnamon.

By the time her parents did come home, one ten minutes after the other, the house smelled of those wonderful Sunday mornings.

“I baked some cinnamon …” she started to say.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Papa said. “But come into the living room, we need to talk to you.”

“Have I done something wrong?” She had good grades, the principal had smiled at her the other day and she always called if she were going to be late.

“Not at all, Sweetheart,” her mother said.

The family only used the living room when they had parties. There was dust on coffee and end tables.

“You tell her,” her mother said.

“Honey, your mother and I have decided to get a divorce. It has nothing to do with you, but we just want different things.”

“When? Who’ll I live with?”

“Papa has an apartment near here. There is a bedroom for you. You can go back and forth at will.”

The rest of what they were saying faded out. She stood and went into the kitchen. The three rolls were cooling on a rack. She picked up all three and wrapped them in a paper towel.

She went out the back door to the patio. There was a barbecue, garden tables and four chairs. She sat in the one no one ever used. Very carefully, she set the rolls on the paper towel and began to eat them one by one.       610 words.