Meeting Someone in the Emergency Room

“I have been waiting for 3 hours! My son is burning up and still hasn’t received attention!” The irrational man screams at the front desk. 

The woman peeks up from her computer screen and replies “Sir, please take your seat and wait patiently like everybody else.” 

“You don’t understand he needs attention now!” He responds, trying to calm his voice as he notices the security guard creep towards him. The security guard’s eyebrows raise as he slips behind the man in an attempt to scare him into submission. 

“Actually sir, you are the one who doesn’t understand. This is an emergency room. In the last hour, multiple patients in bad shape have entered, and a fever ranks very low in our priorities. Your son will be fine sir” she asserts. The man huffs and with clenched fists returns to his seat. As he sits down next to me, he wraps his son in his arms and combs through the boy’s hair with his fingers.

I had entered the emergency room 30 minutes before, but my aching arm was only getting worse and was desperate for attention. It felt like someone was scraping a knife across the bone. 

Everyone has heard stories of people getting bad injuries skateboarding. A serious injury my first time skating was not what I hoped for. Skating was a habit I had picked up in an attempt to bond with my new roommates. Their skateboarding abilities put me to shame, so as a fool does, I had attempted to show off by skating on the highest ramp. I like those guys and felt like we were starting to be cool. Yet here I am sitting in the emergency room by myself. We had become such great friends that after I broke my arm they were kind enough to tell me the location of the nearest emergency room, before returning to our dorm. Leaving me to drive one-handed with my injured arm dangling by my side. 

My old friends would be here with me, I thought. You are the one who chose to go off to college a few states away, I remembered.  My mom had warned about the pain of making all new friends and yet the decision still looked appealing at the time. At the moment, the pain of missing home had finally taken the back seat and my arm was all I could think about while attempting to rest in the position of the least pain. 

When entering the emergency room I had chosen the first empty seat near the front desk. Unknowingly placing myself next to a train wreck of a man and his poor kid dealing with a mild fever and embarrassing dad. The empty seat in the corner was looking especially tempting at the moment. It would feel rude to move away from the man but he was in such a frenzy he may not even notice. 

“This is ridiculous” I heard him mutter under his breath.

“I am sure your son will be fine sir,” I said comfortingly. I doubted the sanity of the man’s mind the more words he spoke. His actions were those of someone living in an alternate reality. His desire to help his son was admirable, but he portrayed a sense of desperation as if his son may die at any moment. I want to introduce him to a bottle of Advil and let him know that's all it takes to defeat a fever. As well, his son looks like a healthy kid trying to hold back tears while watching his father unravel. The son gazes at his father with a deep innocent sadness in his eyes. Having a fever is a pain but a dysfunctional father hurts far worse. I knew of those struggles, or at least I had.

“You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about” He muttered. 

“I was only trying to be nice, you know fevers are usually not too big of a deal” I replied. The more I spoke with the man, my dislike towards him grew. 

“People like you are the reason we cannot get treated. What are you in for a broken arm? Who has ever died of a broken arm? But you will still get treated before us!” He said surveying me. 

What is the guy talking about? He is accusing me of being in for a bad reason! Is he serious? Does he even understand how little a deal a fever is? I wondered.

“No sir, I am not going to die of a broken arm, but your son is going to be okay too. I have had fevers tons of times; it'll be gone in a few days. Why don’t you take him home and let him get some sleep, that is likely what he really needs” I replied trying to put a voice of reason in the deranged man’s head. 

The man gazed at his feet looking like he was replaying something painful in his head. After a long pause, he replied “That is exactly what I thought last time. Like any other normal person I wrote it off.” He exhaled. ”Where are you from kid?” 

His character had completely changed and I was taken aback by his sudden tenderness. I had thought the kid seemed sad but the look in the man’s eyes was dead. He wanted to know my name as if he felt bad for how he had been treating me before. Honestly, after hearing the pain in his voice, my earlier judgement seemed too harsh. I want to hear the story of the “last time” he spoke of but I don’t know a smooth way to ask. 

“Listen, sir I am sorry if I responded rudely, obviously I don’t know you, I was just making a suggestion. Your kid does not look happy here” I said. 

“Alabama or Mississippi I am guessing? Based on the polite way you phrase things even while being rude” He chuckled. “I understand what is best for my kid, but you seem like a nice kid, your suggestion is noted.” 

Who in the heck is this guy? I wondered. The dumb brute type of guy I took him for had faded from my head now and I had no idea what to think of him. 

“I was raised in Huntsville by my mother,” I said and he grinned. “Sir this may be out of my space, but do you mind if I ask why you are so worried about your son’s fever?” I interrogate him while reading if the question angers him. 

“Oh man, you were raised by a single mother? Man, that is tough, it is not easy alone. No one is ready for it” he says while glancing at me, dissecting me.

He was ignoring my question and digging a lot deeper into my life than I wish to go with some random emergency room stranger. In an attempt to deter him I replied “Yeah she is amazing.” Hoping my short response would end his barrage of personal questions. 

“Has your mom ever had a fever?” he asked me while staring across the ER at another patient who was being admitted into the back for treatment. His frustration had blocked the words I had spoken from reaching his ears.

“Uhm yeah of course she has, I mean I think everybody has had one before.” I hope this weird question leads to an explanation of my previous question.

“And when she did, were you scared?” he asked.

“No of course not, she felt a little sick for only a few days. She didn’t even stay home from work because she had used all her sick days when I had been sick.” I answered him.

He laughed. “I know about that trouble. Jobs don’t give enough sick days for a single parent and their kids. So the night she was sick did you go to bed or did you stay up worrying?” 

“Honestly I don’t remember all the details but I’m sure she took some medicine to get rid of the fever and I went to bed like any other night” I responded. I did not understand the direction he was going with these questions. His badgering comes across as an attempt to make me feel guilty for not taking fevers as seriously as him. Blaming me for not worrying constantly while my mom had the fever.

“And the next day when you woke up did she greet you at the breakfast table?” he asked. 

“Yes, she did! What is the point of all these questions, the fact that you’re guilt-tripping me for not treating fevers like you is starting to make me think you're crazy again” I replied. In saying this I had revealed to him the low standing I had held him in two minutes earlier. 

“That is exactly the opposite of what I am doing. I am showing you that you treat fevers exactly the same way I did. Like you suggested, I gave my wife a little pain medicine, kissed her on her warm forehead, and went to sleep. As I drifted off she told me that she was feeling better” He recalls the story, pausing repeatedly, trying to pull the memories from deep in his mind making me believe he recalls the story for the first time. “And that was it. The last words she ever spoke to me. Unlike in your case, she did not meet me for breakfast the next morning. I assumed she had slept in because of her illness. But when I got from work that night I discovered that she was still in bed. And was dead.” His son was now sobbing in his arms, the boy had slowly leaned into him and had cried harder and harder as the story progressed. “That is why we are here. And as I said to you first, you will never understand that. The doctor didn’t understand why she passed. It was one in a billion, but yet it happened and because of that we are here.” He finished the story with a sigh and solemn glance over at me. 

My brain had been rendered useless and I was straining to comprehend what I heard, while also trying to move my lips to speak back. Any logical response was escaping me. I sat stunned when suddenly the boy spoke “Daddy, I wanna go home. We have been here every other week for months. I am scared like you, but what happened to mom is not going to happen to me. We can’t live in fear forever.” The boy held back tears long enough to speak before beginning to sob again. 

The man sighed and replied “I know you are right buddy, I just can’t do it. But I have to try, for your sake, I have to try.” He picked up his kid and began walking towards the door only stopping to give me a firm grasp of the shoulder and through teary eyes nod. Through his eyes, I could feel him say “thank you, son!”

It had all happened so fast. I had no idea what I had done to help them. Sitting there I was still trying to understand the story I had heard and still could not formulate the words to respond, as they walked towards the door. My arm no longer hurt anymore. My homesickness had set in again. I will buy a cheap arm cast from the pharmacy and drive home tonight, I thought. I had a parent to thank and another whose grave I wanted to visit for the very first time.