Scrubs
I took a friend to the hospital on Friday. His dad had a heart attack and he needed a ride. The reasons he needed a ride could take hours to explain; suffice to say that he currently doesn't have a license and it has nothing (or little) to do with alcohol.
After a 45 minute drive out there...45 minutes filled with uncomfortable discussion about online dating and my sex life...we get to the hospital. His dad is in the cardiac care unit and so we wander aimlessly through the building until we find that particular wing and floor. You know how hospitals are. They are all wildly different on the outside. Gothic. Utilitarian. Federal style. 70's urban. But you go inside and they're all exactly the same. They have colored lines on the floor directing you where to go. There are signs everywhere telling you to wash your hands. The doors are big and reminiscent of airlocks in 60's space movies. Everyone dresses the same. No one pays attention to you unless you're bleeding out on the floor.
Once we finally get the attention of the woman stationed directly outside my friend's father's room, she tells us he's in the basement. In the cath lab. Whatever that means. So we wander down there, in search of family members whose presence might indicate that we're in the right place at the right time. We get to the cath lab (again, I don't know) and they tell us that the family just went to the cafeteria.
I don't have to tell you about hospital cafeterias. We've all been there. A step up from school cafeterias, granted, but surrounded by desperation and grief. Not that school cafeterias aren't, for that matter. The cafeteria at the hospital my dad was at when he was sick was pretty swanky. This one, not so much.
We do manage, at that point, to find someone that my friend recognizes: his brother and sister-in-law. Introductions go around and we sit down so they can eat. It is then that the unimaginable occurs.
Someone is making announcements as we're sitting down. There's some kind of program getting ready to start, something put on by hospital adminstration for the staff there. We're sitting on the other end of the room, by the internet cafe, safely hidden from this spectacle, for the most part. As we sit, the emcee is calling everyone into the room with promises of food and drink, as, of course, would be available in a cafeteria. Duh.
The program starts. The president of the hospital gets up. It is a Black History month program. He's not very black. Neither is most of his audience. However, he's giving it the old college try. We're trying to block him out, talking about the heart attack, where it happened, how he got to the hospital.
Then the president turns the microphone over to a woman. And she starts to sing a gospel song. Now, I like gospel. I've sang gospel. I know good gospel when I hear it. Good gospel, this wasn't. This woman...I wouldn't go so far to say she was tone-deaf. However, if she was the best the hospital had to offer? They should've contracted out. She sings a verse of this song. Friend, Brother, Sister-in-law and I all look at each other. They start eating faster. I'm turned all the way around in my seat just so I can see this car wreck. Then?
She exhorts the room to start singing. It isn't just her singing now, it is a roomful of white people singing off-key gospel in the basement cafeteria of a hospital. My friend gets up, looking for the print out of the words so he can join in on the next verse.
"Don't even think about it," I hiss at him as he walks past me to look at the papers lying on the next table. He sits down, cowed.
Brother and sister-in-law finish at just about the time the song is over, just in time for the prayer to start. We hoof it out of there and I thank God in my own special way.
As we're sitting in the waiting room of the cath lab, Sister-in-law turns to me.
"Didn't I see that on an episode of 'Scrubs'?"
Amen, sister. Amen.
After a 45 minute drive out there...45 minutes filled with uncomfortable discussion about online dating and my sex life...we get to the hospital. His dad is in the cardiac care unit and so we wander aimlessly through the building until we find that particular wing and floor. You know how hospitals are. They are all wildly different on the outside. Gothic. Utilitarian. Federal style. 70's urban. But you go inside and they're all exactly the same. They have colored lines on the floor directing you where to go. There are signs everywhere telling you to wash your hands. The doors are big and reminiscent of airlocks in 60's space movies. Everyone dresses the same. No one pays attention to you unless you're bleeding out on the floor.
Once we finally get the attention of the woman stationed directly outside my friend's father's room, she tells us he's in the basement. In the cath lab. Whatever that means. So we wander down there, in search of family members whose presence might indicate that we're in the right place at the right time. We get to the cath lab (again, I don't know) and they tell us that the family just went to the cafeteria.
I don't have to tell you about hospital cafeterias. We've all been there. A step up from school cafeterias, granted, but surrounded by desperation and grief. Not that school cafeterias aren't, for that matter. The cafeteria at the hospital my dad was at when he was sick was pretty swanky. This one, not so much.
We do manage, at that point, to find someone that my friend recognizes: his brother and sister-in-law. Introductions go around and we sit down so they can eat. It is then that the unimaginable occurs.
Someone is making announcements as we're sitting down. There's some kind of program getting ready to start, something put on by hospital adminstration for the staff there. We're sitting on the other end of the room, by the internet cafe, safely hidden from this spectacle, for the most part. As we sit, the emcee is calling everyone into the room with promises of food and drink, as, of course, would be available in a cafeteria. Duh.
The program starts. The president of the hospital gets up. It is a Black History month program. He's not very black. Neither is most of his audience. However, he's giving it the old college try. We're trying to block him out, talking about the heart attack, where it happened, how he got to the hospital.
Then the president turns the microphone over to a woman. And she starts to sing a gospel song. Now, I like gospel. I've sang gospel. I know good gospel when I hear it. Good gospel, this wasn't. This woman...I wouldn't go so far to say she was tone-deaf. However, if she was the best the hospital had to offer? They should've contracted out. She sings a verse of this song. Friend, Brother, Sister-in-law and I all look at each other. They start eating faster. I'm turned all the way around in my seat just so I can see this car wreck. Then?
She exhorts the room to start singing. It isn't just her singing now, it is a roomful of white people singing off-key gospel in the basement cafeteria of a hospital. My friend gets up, looking for the print out of the words so he can join in on the next verse.
"Don't even think about it," I hiss at him as he walks past me to look at the papers lying on the next table. He sits down, cowed.
Brother and sister-in-law finish at just about the time the song is over, just in time for the prayer to start. We hoof it out of there and I thank God in my own special way.
As we're sitting in the waiting room of the cath lab, Sister-in-law turns to me.
"Didn't I see that on an episode of 'Scrubs'?"
Amen, sister. Amen.
posted by Miss Head at
4:44 AM
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