As I wait for the manuscript to come back from the developmental editor, I want to share with you one of my favorite humorous stories from "Nowhere Else I Want to Be."
Enjoy!
I was on duty one evening about a week later when Gina’s difficulties breathing made us call 911. I followed on foot to Howard Hospital, only a few blocks away, and went inside to find her on a stretcher in the hall because there were no bays available.
We settled in for what became a long and chaotic wait that did have two redeeming features – Gina spouted endless and hilarious commentary, and a drunk patient obligingly provided her with something on which to remark. Gina first noticed him when something moved on what had looked like an empty stretcher parked in a nearby corner.
"It’s alive!" Gina might have imagined her whisper actually was a whisper. She would have been deluding herself.
"Good Lord, Gina, you scared me." I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I was not the only one.
"Here we go again. Why do weird shit always happen when you bring me to the ER?" She was speaking to me but keeping a cautious eye on the stretcher. Since I was on her right and the stretcher was to her left, her head was turned away from me. This meant that she had to ditch entirely the effort to whisper in favor of her normal tone of voice, always impressive in its ability to cut through ambient noise.
"I could say the same thing to you."
"Whatever. Did you see that thing move?"
She was staring at the stretcher, and though I had not noticed movement, I watched it for a moment. It looked like a pile of dirty sheets plunked down haphazardly, ready for laundry services. Suddenly, as if on cue, an arm fell out from under the disorderly pile.
Gina jumped. "Shit!"
I had jumped, too, along with the others around us now forming what could only be termed an audience.
"See? See? It’s alive!"
"Could you watch your language? Others can hear you."
Some small part of me realized I sounded prissy, but I couldn’t stop myself and was well aware of Gina’s potential for flamboyant and dramatic scenes. Hopefully she would not notice the amused and interested expressions on the faces around her. That would be all she needed.
She was paying me no mind, going on about the guy about to fall off his stretcher and I should go catch him. Fat chance, I thought, as she let loose another shit.
"Would you hush? He’s drunk. Not someone I want to tangle with right now."
Gina snorted in amusement, picturing, I assumed, me in a struggle for control over this rather large, certainly drunk man as he half climbed, half fell from the stretcher. She had no time to share her imaginings, however, because he staggered a few steps forward as though about to fall flat.
"Watch out!" Gina’s call was far more disquieting than the poor man’s stumble and had a far more startling effect on those within earshot, which, given the piercing nature of her voice, was essentially the entire ER. "He fallin’!"
Drawn by her stentorian tones, ER personnel rushed over to try to help the man back onto the stretcher. After a brief struggle, the guards succeeded in getting him to lean against the wall, support that seemed to please him in a way that the idea of lying down again had not. Apparently believing their help was no longer needed, the security guards walked back to their station. Soon, and with the slow deliberation of the alcohol-impaired mind, the man began to unbutton his shirt.
Gina made a disgusted face but did not turn from her avid watching. "Hairy beer belly. Yuck."
At this stage I had dropped all pretense and was staring as much as anyone. I didn’t add color commentary, but then, it wasn’t needed. Gina was all over it. "That nasty shirt, who would wanna wear a shirt like that? If something crawl out of it, I’ma pitch a fit. Nasty thing."
But not even Gina was equal to the task of maintaining running chatter when, swaying on his feet, our drunken entertainer began to fumble with his zipper. Mouth agape, she watched as he unzipped his pants. "Oooooooh, lord."
With the settling of his pants around his ankles came the realization he wore no undergarment.
Gina dug a sharp elbow into my arm. "I see it! I see it!"
Another dig. "Carol, do you see it?"
Just about then the security guards rushed in and hustled the poor man toward the bathroom. Gina dug again, elbow to my forearm, asking her question. Clearly she was not going to shut up unless she got her response. I sighed. "Yes, Gina, I saw it."
Naturally, my admission amused Gina exceedingly, her amusement lasting through the evening and well past our return to Miriam’s House the next morning. Gina got a lot of mileage out of the story of the drunk guy droppin’ his drawers right in front of Carol, almost all of which I heard about second-hand from highly amused staff members.
~~~~~~~~
The kitchen at Miriam’s House gets really hot in the summertime. Appliance motors on the ice machine, the three-door refrigerator and the freezer, a 10-burner stove and two ovens kick out enough heat to fill even this fairly large space. Several ceiling vents releasing an air-conditioned breeze cannot keep up. So on the Sunday after our ER adventure, making breakfast in that hot kitchen and with a migraine coming on, I am struggling to maintain my composure.
"Hey, whatcha cookin’?" Gina, recently out of bed, judging from the state of her hair.
"Pancakes, bacon, home-fries..."
She doesn’t let me finish the list. "Blueberry pancakes?"
I eye her warily. "Well, no, Gina, not this week."
Uh, oh.
"You know that’s my favorite. Last time you made ’em you ain’t even made your blueberry syrup to go with ’em." Gina never exactly pouted, but I have never known anyone who can so effortlessly assume an air of bruised betrayal. I avoid looking at her face, aware that my control over my temper is at gossamer strength. The bacon needs tending, so I mask my unwillingness to look Gina in the eyes by bustling with great concern over to the electric frying pan, spatula at the ready. Without looking up, I speak again.
"Blueberries are out of season. And not all the residents like ’em, so I thought plain would be a good change."
"But you said you’d make blueberry, remember? At the ER? When that guy took off his pants in front of you?"
"Good grief, Gina, it wasn’t in front of me, really, and how do you expect me to ..." Suddenly, the five or six women waiting in the dining room rush in. They have overheard the phrase, took off his pants in front of you.
"What? What?"
"Took his pants off in front of Miss Carol? When?"
"Naked? With Carol right there?"
Eager interest in this juicy story makes them deaf to my pleas to get out of the hot, crowded kitchen. Gina, inveterate lover of attention, is in her element. "Falls right off his stretcher thing in the ER and stumbles around, like he ain’t know where he is. Drunk and..."
"Get out of the kitchen! How am I supposed to cook?"
As I rarely lose my temper, at least, not in front of the residents, six chastened women leave in rather a hurry, surprised, I should guess, by my vehemence. Immediately, I feel guilty for shouting at them. I turn my frayed attention back to the bacon. The burning bacon. Time for a deep breath, a sip of tea, a gathering of the shredded remnants of my patience. Gina and her audience are huddled at a dining table for the highly dramatized, I have no doubt, denouement of the story. Great. Plain pancakes and burned bacon for breakfast and I’m hot and my head is getting worse.
At that moment, Gina’s voice rises above its stage whisper. I can hear her from my position by the stove and recognize in her tone the approaching high point of the story. A happily horrified gasp arises from the women clustered around Gina as she produces the coup de grace:
"We saw it."
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Ricardo Henriquez
