ER: The Final Episode
Last night around 7 p.m. I got a call out of the blue from my kid's mom - she had taken Miki, who is 10, to the local ER, where they were cooling their heels waiting to be seen. It seems they had just gotten out to their campsite when Miki, complaining of dizziness, fell sleep. An hour later, her temp was 105 by one thermometer, 106 by another.
I sped to the hospital, wisely bringing a book. Miki looked flushed and feverish, but was calm and had few other symptoms. After a friendly interview with a skinheaded fellow auspiciously named Chad, Miki was led to an ER space that included two other kids with high fevers and two cadaverous women in their 80s, one with a broken hip. There were other single waiting rooms along the halls, none empty.
We waited. Not just us, but all of the patients. I'm sure somewhere, medical work was taking place. Someone took Miki's temp and made sure she did not have more than a single sheet, so that her teeth would chatter constantly. A young, lone physician looked in and said he'd order a blood test. About four hours later, a Phlebotomist of the Super Dilatory Persuasion floated in, and spent about 20 minutes drawing a couple of tablespoons of blood. Earlier we'd all been treated to the audio of a four-year-old with very small veins and a great fear of needles who'd had to undergo repeated needle-prickings for close to an hour [brain-piercing screams here], so Miki was mentally prepared for it.
If blood counts turned out to be normal, Miki could go home: Motrin and Tylenol, rest and fluids. "It's going around," the doctor said. "We're seeing lots of kids with high fevers, but few other symptoms." The kids in our waiting area turned out to have strep, but Miki just had what he was calling an "adeno" virus - which something in me translated as the "Aahh (that's Southern for 'I') dunno" virus, which upon reflection seems a more accurate rendering.
At one point in the evening, I left Miki's side to find a soda machine. The ER was eerily quiet. Patients lay on stretchers in their rooms, isolated. Staff chattered behind closed office doors - through a window, I glimpsed a giant bowl of pasta being passed around. Later, this reminded me of things.
It reminded me of a yellowed board game, abandoned with pieces still trying to win. Of Miss Havisham's spidery wedding cake, falling to dust. Of a broken bauble on a forgotten artificial Christmas tree. The American system of health care reminded me of the dollhouse of an ex-child. Of a once-intriguing theory no longer captivating to game theorists. Of a patient etherized upon a table.
Had we not reminded the ER staff around 11:30 p.m. that blood had yet to be drawn, our duree would have been longer. Had Miki's mom not gone to the car to bring her some motrin at 12:45 a.m., it's anyone's guess when the ER would have found the inspiration.
I'm not being fair here. I'm not quite objective here. Very possibly a rash of emergencies had broken out - a tribe of Apache warriors descending upon one of our sundry sleeping Florida Gated Communities, scalping residents in their walkers and slippers. An audience of Attack of the Clones found comatose from taedium vitae. A convenience store hold-up man decapitated by a possum; an RV salesman walking in with a feathered spear in his gut.
It's impossible to say with any pride of journalistic responsibility what in fact caused our visit to the ER to be so vitally unprepossessing, so lacking in sweetness and light. Who can say why a facility created to deliver expensive, heroic Emmy Award-Winning TV Dramas lay dying beneath a hospital blanket of boredom?
Who can say. As we trudged down the corridors around 1 a.m., past the same faces on the same stretchers in the same waiting rooms, the patience of the patients rose like a warrior on a field of battle, his Wooden Indian face reflecting a sad understanding of who and what was critically injured. The man with the stump of a leg, the tanned babe with the undisclosed symptoms, all trying to give the most injured patient their attention and empathy - to make its last hours comfortable, as they would for any victim of life's ills. Physician, Heal Thyself.
11:03:05 AM 
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