I would never have thought that I would be spending all of the Saturday that I was supposed to have spent at SPEAQ Campus at the General Hospital Emerg in the waiting room instead, but life rarely steers you where you think you should be going. I had not been feeling physically well since Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning I had begun to feel much worse, so I had asked Stephanie whether I should go to the General or not, which is up the hill from Concordia, and she had insisted that I do in fact go.
It was pretty quiet when I got there and so I had thought it would not take too long for me to be seen by the doctor... big mistaken assumption on my part seeing as there is a whole behind-the-scenes area through which many more patients with much bigger issues and problems pass. The worst part was that I had not brought my Ipod nor my book "Women are Crazy, Men are Stupid" because I had thought that I would be going out later with the SPEAQ crowd to Mckibbin's... so, I had nothing to entertain myself with other than my topsy-turvey thoughts and images of a dear one walking through the very area where I was stuck twiddling my thumbs; wondering in which area he might have worked and who he might in fact know while telling myself to focus on the silly Sudoku I was trying to do from the 24 Heures with the ballpoint pen I had bummed from the unimpressed and jaded looking security guard. *Sigh* Did I mention the title of the book I could have brought with me and did not? Well, me sitting in the waiting room, musing, pondering, reminiscing and imagining the way I was? Prime example of a loca senorita.
I was getting even crazier by the minute because of the wait, which was no one's fault, and I was too bummed out and physically hurting to really talk to any of the other individuals waiting around in the same dreary state I was in. A balding man on a stretcher in front of me needed help a couple of times, once with rolling his plaid sleeve back onto his arm, another time because the faded folded hospital gown at the foot of his makeshift bed had fallen and the last with his boots when he wanted to go out for a smoke, but other than that, we were all pretty miserable and not speaking much to each other.
At some point in the early afternoon, after I had been seen by the cute Asian frontline nurse wearing dark turquoise and purple lined scrubs, who left me with a huge bruise on my right hand after having tried to take blood from there, I had gone back to triage to know when I would be seen. I was sitting in the hallway directly to the right of the entrance, waiting at the triage door, the swinging doors into the next long corridor opening every once in a while because of a punched in security code to reveal a dark-skinned man holding what looked like a Bible, fervently imploring any passersby to say "Hallelujiah", when a bald Latin American man sat next to me. He was holding his head and looking a little more than dazed; he rather quickly went in to see the triage nurse and then lurched and stumbled to the registration area while I went to see the triage nurse and did not get any of the responses I had been hoping for.
I therefore grudgingly went back to my original seat and resigned myself to spending the whole day staring at the ensuing and oh-so-boring golf game on the tv screen mounted on the wall directly in front of me. A few minutes after my bum had somewhat comfortably settled on the not-so-comfortable plasticy seat, the groggy looking thirty-something year old man plopped himself in the vacant place next to mine. The dialogue between us pretty much began like any other conversation that is started in a hospital waiting room: questions like what's wrong with you to make you be here, how long have you been here and how long do you have to wait followed. He calmly told me his diagnosis by the triage nurse in his slightly accented voice: he either had a nerve stuck somewhere near his jaw that was not allowing the right side of his face to move normally, or he was going to have a stroke... wow.
"So, I woke up this morning and the whole right side of my face was numb and you see? I still can't really move my lips normally - what does my face look like right now? Am I smiling evenly or do I still look like Jim Carrey? God I hate Jim Carrey and I hate looking like him. Hey, I have a question for you, which disease is a fake one? Pink rabies or water intoxication?" (Pink rabies by the way). And so began my day with Angelo, a well-meaning yet perhaps slightly deranged fellow patient, and my short-lived yet very entertaining education concerning the seemingly peculiar customs or beliefs held by various cultures. Do any of you know why a Japanese man will order a smaller meal than his boss when out at a restaurant? Did you know that some Latin Americans are so ashamed to be called by that cultural name that they deny it completely? And, I am sure that some of you had no idea that Koreans will give gifts with two hands, not just one. We also had a rather interesting discussion about language and what it means for a person like me to not be able to identify with a specific language, but rather equally with two; he thought it was hilarious that I cannot speak angrily in my supposed mother tongue when I am really peed off and so I usually have to resort to English or end up looking like a stuttering and spluttering fool. Peeps, you think I, Marie-Eve Therrien, speak a lot? Well, you have not met Angelo, who would be my match and perhaps even rival in any conversational Olympics if there were any.
I, in the frayed and nervous state that I was in by the time I met him, welcomed the distraction and listened avidly, but somewhat annoyingly, I'll grudgingly admit, to all of his banter. We settled into a mostly one-sided exchange, our seating arrangements not allowing us to really be that distant from each other, so our arms were touching not uncomfortably. At times, I wished I was back to being alone because his overly energetic monologues were demanding way too much of my attention and focus when all I wanted to do was leave, go home, put on my flannel pj's and crawl in between my cold sheets, but his presence was in general very welcome.
Having lost track of the time that was crawling by so slowly like a stoned and inebriated snail, I do not have any idea when the screaming commenced from somewhere in the back that was not visible to us fortunate folk in the waiting area. Seeing my horror-struck expression and intuitively knowing that his conversation would no longer hold my attention, Angelo kindly offered that we listen to his MP3 player, which I gladly accepted and tuned into with one ear while he listened to the other. Then, when the yelling grew worse, he kindly offered the other earphone to me so that I could plug both of my ears and focus on the rather strange song that he later told me was a lesbian love ballad... will not even comment on that!!!
And then, like a rainbow after a really dark and rainy day when the sun barely peeks out from behind the gloomy and gray clouds, my beautiful and wonderful English mate Row decided that she would come and see me despite my protestations, negations and grumblings to the contrary. She appeared by my side after having texted me throughout the day for updates and she was bearing two gifts: an oatmeal cookie and a Cadbury Creme Egg... what a blessing she was! Her blondish red hair was slightly damp from the softly falling snow that had started at some point during the awfully long day, but her wide and open mouthed grin and shining eyes were all I paid attention to and took solace from... ok, ok, the chocolate and the cookie DID help a little as well. However, it was evidently more the fact that she was sitting there next to me, willing to wait around until I was examined by the doctor, that really made me see what it means to truly be someone's friend. And, of course, I have mentioned that she had brought me chocolate AND a cookie.
At the end of this horrible day, I was more than alright, which I cannot say the same about for the other patients with whom I had shared my time because I do not know what their fates were. The "Hallelujah" preacher, the blood-curdling screamer and even the ancient Italian man who jumped out of his stretcher, pulled out his IV and was found wandering in the stairwell after I had seen more than I would have ever wanted to see of his flabby and sunken backside, were all way worse off for wear than I was.
I left the Hospital at 9:30 pm after having registered at roughly 11:00 am and all I could think about was how I was going to scarf down a massive poutine at Mckibbin's with my woman Steph, who was waiting for me there with the other SPEAQ members I had unwillingly let down by my absence. During my interminable stay at the General, I met an angel who would not shut up and I ate a Cadbury Creme Egg brought to me by a woman I am so fortunate to be able to call my friend; I left the stale air and, in order to celebrate, my body decided to jog along Sherbrooke street and then to sprint down Mackay all the way to Mckibbin's. I am hoping that my talkative angel was able to leave the Hospital in the same capacity that I was and I cannot thank him enough for having kept me company during our shared waiting time.
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