EMERGENCY!!!

Emergency.

The very word itself implies a truckload of urgency.... Something terrible has happened, and no matter what, something must be done quickly!

Yesterday afternoon, sometime about 3'ish, my 12 year old son was skateboarding home. Sounds pretty good so far, but like we see all too often on prime time American "Good Times Gone Bad" television serials, tragedy strikes. A slip, and the strike of a rock is technically what caused the accident, but the long and short of it is that my boy went tumbling off his board and smashed his foot against a concrete barricade.

I got home from work a little later, say 5:30'ish, to find him with a bruised and slightly swollen foot. Well, there was nothing for it. After an absolutely delicious tuna helper dish with home made buns, we decided we had best go the hospital for X-RAYS. We left about 6:30'ish.

A quick 15 minute hop up the highway to Lacombe, and we are at the hospital Emergency room. Again, that word stares back at me, and I wonder... At any rate, we check into the nurse station and head for the infamous "Waiting Room of Eternal Boredom". Surprisingly, there was only one person in the room, and apparently, they were supposed to be admitted already. I imagine the time was flying by for everyone except me. They had a small television on, the kind with the VHS player built right in. It was blasting some popular series on customizing vans or something and almost all eyes were fixed on it as if it were a pearl of cyclopean proportion. I was reading a thoroughly fascinating magazine on some of Canada's great achievements...

After sitting for what seemed like an hour, my wife and son went into an Emergency observation area. Curses, again the word glares at me, as if pronouncing "My very existance defies your common sense..." I read more. At one point, two women who had been waiting for a while began getting antsy... Well antsy only in the way that two people who resemble "George" and "Gracie" the humpback whales can be. After heaving her ponderous bulk through the waiting room to the nurses station, she rumbled back in pronouncing rather loudly, "This is bullshit! We should just call Doctor Jackson at home!" I felt kind of like pointing out that it was a bit improper to speak that way to people whom you wish to have help you, but I thought that discretion was the better part of valor and left them well enough alone. The last thing I needed was the bane of two behemoth women in a room the size of your average small office...

I began to think it was taking some time... the reading must have been getting to me. I ventured past the nurses station and found the Emergency observation area they had assigned to Bradley and my wife. Well the doctor hadn't even been in to see them yet so I sat down and we waited for a while. The boy's foot looked pretty sore. I know they wanted to do X-RAYS and finally, the doctor appeared and told us to head down to the X-RAY lab where they were EXPECTING us. It's been around an hour already, so I am convinced this is time for action! Get the X-RAYS, the doctor's analysis, and perhaps a cast... At any rate, they brought in a wheel chair for Bradley to sit in, and he was pretty pleased with it. He described it as the "Cadillac Escalade" of wheelchairs.... leather upholstery even!

He began the long wheel down the hallway to the X-RAY department. We passed the next nursing station, where they had around 5 nurses, monitoring vital signs, and recording results, and performing tests and stuff. Well maybe not, but they could have been... We pulled up outside the X-RAY room, and were quite surprised to find a darkened room, with no one about. Perhaps they had several X-RAY rooms, and we had chose poorly... I think not. Not in small town, rural Alberta. It was at least another 15 minutes of waiting, and telling Bradley to stop playing with the wheelchair before someone finally came along. It was a matter of about 12 seconds, and they were done. "Take these to the Doctor at the Emergency nurses station please." I simply have made a choice to ignore that word for the rest of this account in case you were wondering at my omission for the last several ocurrences.

It was all action now. Had the X-RAYS done, given them to the doctor, waiting in the Emergency observation area, and high hopes of no fractures... He came right away! Nothing broken, just a big ugly bruise. There could be some damage underneath in the "growth plate" but some good rest should heal it up in no time. He asked if we wanted a Tenser Bandage or not, and we said we would, as the exact whereabouts of the ones at home was sketchy at best. A nurse was coming to put one on presently. We waited around for a while longer, and I thought maybe I would go and read some more in the Emergency waiting room to pass the time. The room hadn't changed except again there was only one other person there, and a new person at that. The television was still screaming out a cacophony of voices describing "Extreme Machines"...

I sat reading an excellent magazine for what seemed like half an hour and finally I thought I had better go and see what was happening. I get to the Emergency observation area, and they are still sitting there waiting. I was a little baffled, and in one motion it was decided that we were leaving that place. We approached the Emergency nurses station and received 3 or 4 quizzical looks, as if their large doey eyes would lull us back into the waiting area... My wife said that we were going to buy our own Tenser bandage and that I had to get home to bed for work tomorrow...

We got home around 9'ish.

I think that while I was in the hospital Emergency area for nearly two hours, I saw 1 doctor, 1 technician, 1 maintenance worker, and most probably 8 to 10 nurses. The only conclusion I can draw is that they must have forgotten to teach them the proper methods of applying Tenser bandages to wounded feet in those expensive years of college.

This commentary is written as parody. Please do not be offended by it in any way... I do not wish to wait longer next time!