Eggplant and Lollipops

Sunday was my great-nephew’s Christening. He looked absolutely adorable, but like all babies his age, he just wanted to get out of his little stiff white suit and into his comfy onesie and his mother’s arms. He didn’t care that there were trays of amazing homemade eggplant parmesan or a carousel of cross-shaped lollipops with his name on them. We appreciated them for him. Two or three times!  My daughter’s hernia (a result of two C-sections) was bothering her a lot the last few days and was especially bad at the party. Since it looked as if there was an alien trying to escape out of her stomach, she named it. Fred. My daughter named her hernia, Fred. She’s my daughter after all! Since Fred looked like he was ready to make an appearance (maybe to sample the eggplant) I insisted she call her surgeon and ask what she should do. Of course I knew he would send her directly to the hospital (DO NOT PASS GO!) and he did. He said he would come in the morning and do the surgery she had been putting off for way too long. Her husband stayed with the kids, I picked her up and we were off to the hospital. The triage went well, the registration went well, the admitting went well. In fact so much went well that normally goes bad that I began to get paranoid. The nurses were cordial and patient and just plain NICE! The doctors were all pleasant and smart and good looking. One in particular was really hot, the one with the five o’clock shadow and the little scar that he probably got from fencing or skiing and the scrubs that hung just barely….ok never mind….but he was a pleasant distraction from Fred. And they all spoke perfect English. Tests were ordered, and within minutes the tests were being done. As we waited for her turn in the CAT scan she used the hospital phone to call home since her cell had lost its bars. The scan done we returned to find that she would be admitted and brought to her room soon. Now as fast as things were being accomplished it was still 3:30am by the time I left the hospital. The car that I thought I had parked so very close seemed so very far at that who-the-hell-is-parading-around-at-that hour. The streets were creepily empty and it didn’t help that every pole and mailbox had a flyer of a local girl gone missing. (And to make matters worse, she is an extended family member) A sanitation truck with its two burly men looked like an oasis in the darkness of the night. They could have been psycho rapists, but to me they were Batman and Robin. I made it home unmolested, made tea, checked out Facebook, watched a taped episode of Oprah and fell asleep for a nano second before the phone rang. It was time! The doctor had come in and she was scheduled to go for surgery within the hour.

      I changed my bloomers and socks and left, bringing a bottle of water which I was instructed to smuggle into the recovery room. Since water after anesthesia is a no-no and the lemon swabs and dampened gauze don’t cut it, my daughter decided that Mom would be good at water trafficking. I arrived, parked (same spot only now I had to feed the muni-meter) and got to her room minutes before they came and wheeled her to surgery. No kicking or screaming just a few tears at the O.R. door. And my daughter was pretty good too! Since the surgery was around two hours I went down to feed the meter, went to the bookstore and Starbucks and went back to her room where I charged her cell phone, watched TV and pretended to not be sick with worry as the clock went passed the two hour mark. I chatted with the Russian patient in the next bed and although I had absolutely no idea what she said, it passed the time. I found the waiting area and waited. And waited. And just when I was about to let my mind go to some bad worrisome place I saw her being wheeled down the hall by her surgeon. She was awake and smiling. Well almost smiling. Sort of smiling. Ok, maybe it was a grimace, but she was awake.

     The recovery room was every bit as nice as the emergency room had been the night before. She had a male nurse that took care of all her needs, and thankfully gave her a really water soaked gauze so that I was able to drink the smuggled water myself. All that waiting made me rather parched. Before the IV’s were even out she was on her cell on Facebook telling the world she had survived. I on the other hand was on a mission. There was a young woman two beds down that looked like the missing girl. She had no visitors by her beside and was still out like a light. I thought about using my cell phone to take a picture of her. I was sure that it was totally unethical and possibly a misdemeanor…so I waited until my daughter could see her and confirm her identity. Unfortunately it was not and I was grateful that I waited before calling the tip hotline and exposing myself as the neurotic lunatic I have become.

     The surgery over, the recovery beginning I was able to breathe normal again. That is until I made the trek (uphill) to my car and found an “unsatisfied muni-meter” ticket. Apparently twelve quarters wasn’t enough to get me through surgery, recovery and investigative surveillance.

PLEASE HELP FIND MARION MCCLENEGHEN
MISSING PERSON

NAME: MARION MCCLENEGHAN

FEMALE WHITE 40 YEARS OLD
D.O.B. 08/16/1969 HEIGHT: 5’10” WEIGHT 150-160LBS

EYES: BLUE          HAIR: BROWN

LAST SEEN AT 360 14TH STREET ON 2/7/10 IN THE CONFINES OF THE 78TH PCT, IN THE PROSPECT PARK AREA OF BROOKLYN.

IF ANYONE HAS SEEN OR HAS INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT THE 78TH DETECTIVE SQUAD AT 1 718 636 6483 CASE#109, COMPLAINT #445 DETECTIVE GIBBONS

...is there a doctor in the house?

I went to go visit my mother in law in the hospital. After navigating the horror that is Flatbush Avenue on a Saturday afternoon I was also cursed by the parking gods with a spot so far from the hospital I could have left the damn car home. The good part is that the walk was downhill all the way. OK don’t get ahead of me, I forgot I would be walking back the exact same way I came only this time it would be uphill. More on that later. It was a sweltering 142 degrees outside and as soon as I stepped out of my air conditioned car my glasses fogged up. I managed to get the glasses de-fogged and started my trek to the hospital. A group of Hassidim’s passed me dressed in long black coats and furry hats and I thought, what kind of God would want them to dress like that and sweat like a pig….ok maybe a bad animal to use as an analogy, but you get the idea. And then as I turned the corner there were four Muslim woman coming toward me dressed literally head to toe in some gauzy glittery print fabric with only a slit allowing their eyes to show….and I thought, what kind of God would want them to dress like that and sweat like a pig…..same idea! Just as I was entering the hospital the automatic doors opened and out walked three nuns in long grey woolen habits tied at the waist with rope and a hood that covered their hair and forehead and I thought to myself what kind of God…..well, you get the picture! So for today, I gave up on trying to figure out God and his couture choices.

     The lady behind the patient information counter had to be as old as God. Maybe older. She had glasses thick as the proverbial coke bottles and wore a perfume that I am sure they stopped making in 1928 because it was killing people. “I need a pass for Room 7099.” From that moment on I realized why there is a God. He was to keep me from impaling myself with the sign-in pencil as I impatiently waited for her to give me the pass. She checked the room, she checked the name, she checked my signature, she checked her watch and her calendar….now security is one thing, but if I had in fact come to harm to anyone in the hospital I would have long given up, killed this old broad and just taken the pass or simply not gotten a pass at all…duh! But for now, with God watching I waited until she wrote the room number on my pass and handed it to me with a smile. And after all that the guard at the elevator hardly even looked at the pass. He was too busy chatting it up with Nurse Malibu Barbie.

     As I navigated the hallways to find her room it dawned on me that not one of doctor’s names on the little tags outside each room was American. Some names had so many letters that they ran out of room on the tag and wrote right on the wall. No Dr. Kildare, Dr. Casey…hell not even a Dr House in the house. Finally a Dr. King….not the Reverend obviously, but an American name. Wrong! Out of a room came Dr. RamashatiKING…hence Dr. King. Where the hell are all the American doctors? Ya know, the ones born in Michigan, Connecticut, even Jersey??? Where did all the little Jewish boys go? They can’t all be the Messiah? Besides wasn’t it every little Jewish boys lot in life to be a doctor, dentist or lawyer? My doctor is a Jew, my dentist is a Jew and so is his twin brother, so I want my doctor to be a Jew as well. I want a Schwartz or Finkelstein, I’d settle for a Seuss, a Spock or even a Livingston (I presume…) I’d even like a consult with Dr. Ruth, Dr. Kissinger even Dr. Dre!

     I found my mother-in-laws room, spent an hour and a half with her thereby securing my place in the will and left for home. By the time I got out of the elevator, passed the casanova security guard, and handed in my pass I was sweating to death. It was then that I remembered how far I had parked, and then almost as an afterthought realized that it would be uphill the whole way. (I know you figured that out before) I lumbered to my car, sucking wind and dripping with sweat and as I passed perspiring nuns, sweaty Hassidims and fermenting Muslims…..I didn’t give it a thought.