Theledge.net

You are sick today. You woke up fine, were happy to go to school, and you sat down to eat breakfast without any indication that anything was wrong.

Two hours later you had a fever of 103.5 degrees and had vomited once.

We decided you should see a doctor.

And this is where the day became fun.

The only appointment the doctor had was at 11:00 o’clock. I picked you up at 10:30. We had a half an hour drive to get there, and we needed gas.

And then, as we entered the highway, we got stuck behind the largest motor-home I have seen in a while, towing a trailer.

And, still stuck behind the motor-home, I found that the three lane highway was closed down to one lane to be repaved.

Needless to say, we were late to the doctor’s office.

This is never good. We (you and I) once spent an hour sitting in the waiting room after arriving 15 minutes late to an appointment under nearly identical circumstances. That time you were quiet and well behaved, but mostly because you felt pretty good. Today you seemed to be mostly unconscious and I did not relish sitting anywhere for a prolonged period of time with you seeming so ill. Especially without being able to give you any Motrin to bring your fever down.

The hospital staff are nice, but firm and generally embittered disconnected. During our last wait they let me know that they had given away our spot about 40 minutes after we arrived, shortly after the point that I had reached that conclusion on my own. About ten minutes after that they suggested that if we were in a hurry we could go to urgent care, even though there was nothing about our demeanor or activities that would have indicated anything like “hurry”. I declined, mostly because we had time, you weren’t that sick, and I am stubborn.

So I got in line to check in. This is another long delay, since everyone with an appointment has to check in at the front desk. Today the line was relatively short, though, and we only stood there for five minutes.

We didn’t actually move in that five minutes, though. We left the line abruptly after you threw up on yourself, on me and on your bunny. We fled the line for a bathroom.

Now, the only bathroom I know the location of is the bathroom in pediatrics. This led to you and I floating through the waiting room, covered in vomit, eliciting looks of extreme concern from the parents who arrived early, or even on time, to their appointments. The children they had brought were unconcerned and continued to play together with the communal toys in an effort to create some kind of super bug.

The front desk staff ignored us as we plunged through the spacious, though closed air, environment.

We cleaned up in the bathroom. Your bunny was a trooper and had fielded most of it. She was wrapped in your coat, which had also received a dousing, and quarantined. You and I got the chunks rubbed off and a small going over with damp paper towels.

I’m sure we looked better than we smelled.

At this point I was done with the check-in line. We left the bathroom and approached the front counter for the pediatricians office, sidling up to the side that is usually reserved for making appointments rather than checking in. I expected to have to go over to urgent care since we were 20 minutes late, not checked in, and covered in vomit.

The three ladies behind the counter were in deep conversation over a website on the monitor. It had a picture of a half naked man on it.

The other parents in the waiting room peered at us with some concern.

The conversation behind the counter indicated this was not the first picture the ladies had looked at in the last few minutes.

I stood and waited. You put your head down on my shoulder. Bunny quietly polluted the air from inside your coat.

There was a discussion about some anatomy. It wasn’t really from a nursing perspective.

They noticed us about the time one of the ladies stated a preference against tattoos.

They looked a little startled.

I said “We have an 11:00 o’clock appointment, we are late and we did not check in. Is there anyway we can see the doctor or should we head over to urgent care?”

And the response came rather quickly “I think we can get you in.”