A Mother’s Wrath
I had a rather terrible Memorial Day weekend, long and rather boring story short I had a seizure and face-planted my bedroom door. After a fun ride to the hospital on back board and neck brace a whole bunch of tests followed and I was admitted because as it turns out my auto-immune condition is quite being managed as well as I thought it was.
After the first couple days sleeping off the concussion and medication side effects I make it to the third day and feel well enough to walk around and even make a trip to the cafeteria downstairs to get something better than the standard hospital food.
Now I didn’t really have much in the way of clothing—my wife brought my favorite hoodie and clean underthings, but forgot pants of all things—so a really nice nurse scrounged up a pair of the hospital’s blue scrub pants for me.
So, I was happily free of the IV cart for the next few hours and decided to get some chocolate milk and maybe a tasty snack to treat myself and lift my spirits a bit.
But it ended up being a rather sad, frustrating affair before I could even make it onto the elevator. I’m pretty slow walking but I’m just content to not be confined to bed or tangled in tubes so I enjoy the sunlight and make friendly conversation with the day shift nurses as I pass by.
Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy. But all that happiness goes away in an instant.
I make it to the waiting area and elevator lobby when a 60-year-old woman with the sourest expression on her face steps off the elevator—like sucked on a whole barrel of lemons type of sour, lips puckered up tighter than a cat’s you-know-what sour.
So I try to give her a wide berth but Pucker Face isn’t having it, she marches straight up to me and gets well into my personal space and starts demanding that I take her to her son’s room and give her an immediate run down of his medical ailments.
This is just how she started the conversation. She yells, “Finally, one of you lazy jerks is going to take me to my son’s hospital room and explain to me my baby boy’s condition.
I’m his mother after all and that wife of his just hasn’t been taking care of him like she should be.” I basically was like…what?
She started berating me and calling me names.
When I tell her I don’t work there, she points out my scrubs. I explain the situation, nope. I show her my patient bracelet with my allergies listed.
Nope, she still doesn’t believe me. She tells me she’s going to get me fired. I point down the hall to the head nurse, and suggest that acting like a jerk to people, especially nurses, is a great way to get thrown out of the hospital.
By this time a couple nurses come over—all of them have clear name badges and credentials on display as well as these little communication devices that are like Star Trek Communicators but look and perform a lot less cool.
The head nurse, who was so sweet just like all the ones I had during my stay, had taken on the scary resting face that would make me think twice, but it didn’t even scare crazy Pucker Face.
She barges right up to the nurse and demands to be taken to her son, spouting off his name and date of birth to basically everyone on the floor and then demands that I be fired.
The head nurse deadpans with a chill game I’m rather envious of, saying, “She doesn’t work here and I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from yelling and harassing people.
This is a hospital and people are trying to heal and rest.”
The woman says, “I understand, but this woman isn’t letting me see my son and he needs his mommy right now. She needs to be dealt with for being such a terrible, irresponsible nurse.” The head nurse explains I don’t work there.
She still won’t believe it. She’s basically a broken record calling for me to get fired like she’s forgotten why she’s here in the first place.
Head Nurse is calm and has explained it as many different ways as she possibly can and is starting to rub her temples with what must be a nasty headache—finally after a couple seconds of silence, she turns to me.
She says, “Hey, you’re fired okay?” Me: “…okay?…” The nurse says, “Go on now, get on your way.” I get on the elevator and head downstairs, incredibly grateful to be away from that monstrous woman and go to collect my well-deserved prize and text my wife about the whole thing—she’ll find it hilarious.
What happened next was the perfect revenge.
It turns out when they look up information for her son—who happens to be two rooms down from mine—he specifically said his mother is on the list of people who absolutely under no circumstances could be allowed to visit.
So, I watched her get dragged kicking, screaming, and biting through the hospital’s main lobby when I was returning from the cafeteria.
The chocolate milk and cookies were twice as tasty after that. The son turned up that evening to apologize for his mother since news of the crazy lady spread across the floor like wild fire.
He and his family were really cool. Looks like we’re going to be physical therapy buddies now and we can swap crazy mom stories together.