Going Up and Going Out

Errol and I were footloose and fancy free for an hour today. Untethered from those damnable machines that keep him alive, we went straight outside!

I hadn't been outside in two and a half days and Errol hadn't been outdoors for a breath of air since he was incarcerated a week and a half ago.

It felt great. The warm air soaked into our pores, a salve for a week of sticks and stones.

When it comes to hospitals, people are usually a lot more happy going than coming. And as we sat on out bench for a luxuriously long moment we watched people scurry out of the hospital smiling, surprised by the balmy breeze.

Errol's heart cath is tomorrow morning at 11:00 am. Dr. Hill walked us through tomorrow's procedure. He carefully explained that safety would be the highest priority in the cath lab. He reassured me by explaining that he would never treat a patient any differently than he would treat his own children.

I asked him if he had kids.

He doesn't.

Hmmmm....

I can't wait 'til Errol is done with his catheterizations, blood draws, and late night x-rays and we can be outside of the hospital all the time.

We get to ride on the service elevators to get our daily x-rays. Service elevators are the VIP lounges of the hospital: sleek, exclusive, fast, full of gorgeous scantily clad women (ok, not the women part unless you count the patient in surgical gowns headed in for liposuction.) The first class status of the service elevators can tun the most lemony day into lemonade. As we headed down to the first floor this morning on the SERVICE ELEVATORS, I noticed a button for 0 floor that I had never seen before. I asked our transport assistant about the secrets of 0 floor. She had to tell me - we're bff since we go to x (that's short for x-ray) twice a day! She named her twins after me!

She wouldn't tell me.

I am starting to know the ins and outs of this place: its lingo, its rhythm, which food not to get from the cafeteria (none of it - not one bite if you ever want to leave on your own two feet), and which of the doctors are really doctors, and which are homeless people wearing medical gowns. It's nice to be an insider - even in a place you don't particularly want to be inside of, so I soldiered on and asked my transpo-hommies, "What is that zero button for?

"Uh, um, s s supplies." my mobile friend stammered.

She gave a nervous glance to her transport colleague who was also on the elevator.

He glanced back at her and cast his eyes down at the ground.

"What kind of supplies do they have down there?" I naively asked. Thinking of aspirin, bandaids, and Duke Medical Center bumper stickers (people don't put a whole lot of those hospital bumper stickers on the backs of their cars: OBX, BHI, DMC!!!!)

My transport friend looked sheepishly at her hands.

Her colleague looked around and then, when she thought no one was listening, bent down, and whispered in my ear, "that's the morgue."

Oh, that kind of supply: dead people, zombies, Sarah Palin. That's not my idea of a good way to get out of the hospital.

In the end, it was a swell trip to x-ray, and I learned something valuable: I will never, never, ever press the 0 button on the VIP elevator.

*I didn't really ask the doctor if he has kids. He does.