Hi there~ I have something a little different for you this time.
About a week ago, our writing group in Taipei had a potluck dinner where some of us read aloud or performed whatever we were working on – poems, short stories, songs.
I had wanted to share a recent piece I had written about a trip to the ER (don’t worry, I am fine!). This is me ‘performing’ this piece out loud. (One of the writers was sweet enough to record each of us.)
It’s supposed to be funny.
Please laugh.
xoMichelle
PS. If you prefer to read the story, it’s below.
Transcript:
It’s 2am and I’ve finally managed to pee in a cup.
Pulling my IV pole along, I squeak back to the waiting area where my friend Natalie has been waiting for me.
Even though it’s the middle of the night, the waiting area is nearly full. There are several rows of seats nailed into the floor at a busy corner where four hallways intersect. A constant stream of movement: stretchers, wheelchairs, crutches, IV drips on wheels, rushing this way and that. It feels like one of those floating markets in Vietnam I’ve seen pictures of online.
The waiting area seats are packed tight, budget-airline style. When you sit down and you’re not in the first row, all you’d have to do is lean a bit forward to smell the scalp of a stranger, maybe be tickled by their hair, frizzy from the humid summer air.
Luckily, Natalie is sitting in the first row.
I walked toward her with a little proud smile. After an hour and a half of chugging water and waiting around, I’d finally done it. The vial of pee was in my pocket.
I squeeze into the seat next to her. She is staring at a TV screen mounted to the wall.
Eyes still glued to the screen, she speaks to me in a low voice, the way a child-ghost speaks when they appear to you in the corner of the room to tell you your future.
On the screen, they showed a video, she says. There’s this guy and he’s talking to the doctor. The doctor says something to him, and suddenly the guy gets angry. They start arguing. The guy gets angrier. He goes into a rage. Then, he grabs the doctor. They struggle for a while. Then in the next scene, they show the guy in jail.
Right, I say. Don’t attack the doctors.
Yes. She looks at me. Don’t.
Natalie has her nighttime glasses on, the ones you wear when you’re not expecting to see anyone or go anywhere for the rest of the day. The ones you wear when your friend texts you late on a Wednesday night with a question like, Hey! Do you ever get spontaneous bleeding that comes and it’s not your period and then it doesn’t stop, smiley-melty-face-emoji? And you answer, No. Is that what’s happening to you? And your friend says yes. And you send her a list of hospitals. Let’s go get it checked out. And your friend is like, Now?? Yes, you say. Just in case. And even though you’ve spent the day taking care of a one-year-old baby, even though you’re exhausted, and are ready for bed, you tell your friend to bring a water bottle and a mask, and you drop a pin at the ER entrance closest to her. And you don’t know that in that instant, this friend who is receiving your texts somewhere north of the city deepens her love for you a little bit more.
~
2:13am
They say the hospital is like a factory. Different rooms, different machines. The humans pass through, get probed, prodded, injected, inspected, before they are extruded and sent away, dead or alive.
I’m number 3351. That’s my name for the duration of my stay at the hospital-factory.
On the big screen in the waiting room, my number flashes. On the intercom: number 3351, please approach the counter at Clinic 1.
I get up and walk into the room. Doctors and nurses sit stand walk and lean over, helping patients take off their pants, get their blood drawn, lie down, get back up. Silvery medical tools and piles of paper everywhere.
I’ve been in this room about five separate times over the past hour, pulling along my IV drip. Squeak in, squeak out.
I walk in again. The nurse looks at me. Is your drip empty?
I look up at the bag.
No.
Why are you here?
You called me, 3351?
Oh. Did we?
She looks up at the screen.
Oh. Well, never mind.
Deflated, I turn around and walk back to the waiting area.
Over the next few hours, Natalie and I exhaust all nooks and crannies of the waiting area. We stand near the corner, by an unused stretcher. We sit in the first row. We sit in the last row. We sit in the last row, but in a different row. We stand again, this time in a different corner.
I lean on the wall, chug my water, listen to how her life has been. We talk about her baby, we talk about my plans, we talk about her in her 20s, we talk about me now. Somehow the lighting is both dim and harsh – and under its eye-drying starkness, we girl out and have a pretty good time.
~
2:31am
The on-call specialist has arrived, groggy and clearly annoyed to be awake.
She shuffles into the clinic with the enthusiasm of a remote-controlled corpse.
I see her approach the nurses before the nurses point towards me, staring at them in the waiting area.
She shuffles over to the row where I’m seated, behind three tightly-packed rows of weary heads.
In a lifeless monotone, she begins the questioning.
Hi, I’m Dr Lin are you Ms Fan
Yes—
Date of birth?
2 Augu—
Sexual history?
Uh…
I look over at my seatmates. It feels like we’re packed inside a minivan.
When I don’t respond right away, the doctor looks up from her folder.
What’s your sexual history? she insists.
I’m confused. What is she asking? Is this a yes or no question?
Um…
She sighs, exasperated. Come on, she says. She wants me to do another test.
Wait, wait, I say. I’m not on insurance. Can I check how much it would be?
An eyeroll.
I can’t help you with that, she says. You have to ask them.
She lifts a limp hand toward the nurses. I nod.
By the time I get up, Dr Lin is already five feet away. Her lethargic shuffle is surprisingly nimble. She disappears around the corner in seconds, checking herself out of a situation where yet another human being is asking for help she can’t offer.
~
3:10am
The tests are done, the pills are retrieved, the bills are paid.
Natalie and I step out into the summer night.
The air is muggy, but it feels fresh, because this was all we’d hoped for: to get back to the world of the well, the unprocessed, the unextruded, back to the dark, empty road that will take us home.
