in the mean time
I spent the wee hours of last night in Providence Portland Medical Center’s Emergency Room; Operaman gashed his head open on his hatchback. Emergency rooms are cold and disconcerting places, otherworldly with their stiff, thin carpets and sharp lights. There were a lot of people with children. There were a lot of people who looked like they’d been there for a very, very long time, and had nearly given up on ever finding comfort. It was like an airport with a weaker sense of camaraderie and a stronger smell of latex.
While I sat in the waiting room the guy across from me asked How did your friend cut his head? and I replied Hatchback. And then I didn’t know what to say, because What are you here for? seemed dangerous and intrusive. Operaman’s injury had been obvious from the bloody dishtowel he was holding to the cut, and we both were lucid and chatting, and it could safely be assumed that I had not hit him over the head with a broken bottle, and that the cut was not a sign of graver things. But with most people in the room it would have been harder to say.
I do not want to ever have to wait in an emergency room by myself.
The guy sitting nearby and I talked quietly for a while about the town of Tillamook and the various models of Subarus and the terrible experiences we had both had with nasty EMTs. And at some point I curled up in my scratchy conference-room chair and fell asleep.
Today I built raised beds for a new school garden in Vancouver - I shoveled and pushed wheelbarrows in the rain, on an empty stomach and four hours sleep, and it felt marvelous. I wouldn’t mind a massage but I’m settling for a quiet night in with books and chocolate pudding. Is there anything to do but try to forget emergency rooms once we’ve left them, and be grateful for our returned health? I feel a strange unease, like I’ve seen something I wasn’t meant to see. I am thankful for the dirt under my nails and the blisters on my palms, reminding me that I am well and not waiting.
1 Comments:
well written.
there are few places so desolate as most emergency room waiting rooms, which is tragic, because if there were ever a place filled with people in need of warmth, color, and hold handing it's here. healing is not something that involves only one's body, afterall.
the only time i've ever waited alone inspired this poem (not great, but your post reminded me in theme):
perishable
--------
sitting in the emergency room
an old woman begins to cry.
without teeth she screams lowly,
in a language difficult to tell.
after so much sitting,
so much waiting
she is suddenly afraid,
painfully afraid
that no one is coming.
i watch her cry.
i am staring, deaf,
lost in the deep geography
of age and anguish in her face.
i feel powerless, wanting to help
when her frantic eyes find mine.
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