Kicking and Screaming
I had a rather bad Memorial Day weekend. Long story short, I had a seizure and face-planted my bedroom door. After a fun ride to the hospital on a backboard and neck brace, a whole bunch of tests followed and I was admitted because as it turns out, my auto-immune condition isn’t quite being managed as well as I thought it was before now. Day three and I 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 as I make it to the waiting area and elevator lobby. A ~60-year-old woman with the sourest expression on her face steps off the elevator—like she sucked on a whole barrel of lemons type of sour, lips puckered up tighter than a cat’s butt 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, then—assuming I’m a nurse because I’m in scrubs—starts demanding that I take her to her son’s room and give her an immediate run down of his medical ailments.
The exchange is as follows between me and the pucker-faced wonder (let’s call her PK): PK: Finally, one of you lazy people 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 as she should be. Me: (thinking “The children’s hospital is next door”) ….what? PK: Oh, don’t play stupid—you’re not pretty enough for that. I know my son’s here and I want to see him right this instant. I think he was brought in on Friday. Me: (really confused and feeling bad for the kid) Uh, I don’t work here. PK: What do you mean you don’t work here? You have on scrubs in a hospital, you’re a nurse—NOW TAKE ME TO MY SON!
Me: (starting to get irritated and sassy) Dude, I’m not a nurse…not everyone who wears scrubs is a nurse. I just didn’t feel like going to the cafeteria in a gown with my butt flapping in the wind. PK: (waves hands as if that’s magically going to make me not being a nurse change in any way) You’re just using that as an excuse to not get in trouble for sucking at your job and being a little jerk. Me: (holds up wrist—including the lovely bright red allergy band) Yeah, no. I’m not a nurse, I’m a patient and I really don’t have to be explaining this to you. Go find someone else who can help you, but you should probably not be such a witch about it.
PK: (inching so close I put my hands up to push her back out of the four remaining inches of personal space) I will act however I want, and you better believe I’m going to get your butt fired. I want to speak to your supervisor. Such unprofessional behavior and talking back to a patient’s family—your bedside manner is atrocious. Me: (pointing to the growing crowd) The head nurse is that way, and for the last time I don’t work here… I’m a patient just like your son, and being a jerk to people, especially nurses, is a good way to get thrown out on your butt by security. So, you might want to tone it down. By this time a couple of real 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 witch face that would make me think twice. Still, it didn’t even scare crazy woman. 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.
PK: Oh, and fire that witch—she’s completely incompetent and rude. Head Nurse (HN): (deadpans with a chill game I’m rather envious of) 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. PK: 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.
Me: But I’m not a nurse…..? HN: Again, she is not employed here. After going back and forth for several minutes, Pucker Face can’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that I don’t actually work at the hospital. 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 of seconds of quiet, she turns to me. HN: Hey, you’re fired okay?” Me: …okay?… HN: (holding an elevator for me) 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. But the story doesn’t end there. As it turns out, when they look up information for her son—who was actually 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. Her 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. They also have a restraining order against this crazy woman. Looks like we’re going to be physical therapy buddies now and we can swap crazy mom stories together. Story credit: Reddit / calypso_cane