Brokenhearted in Bakersfield
21 - SWEET ANGEL OF MERCY
It’s not unusual at Broken
Heart Park for our reality checks to bounce.
Even though, over the years, I’ve gotten used to waking up under my coach, I’d
never before woken up to find a beautiful shimmering being hovering over
me. She began to shake me awake.
“Wake up, dear. It’s time for your injection.
You want some more morphine, don’t you?”
“Am I on the other side?”
“No. Maybe you ought to be dead, but
you’re not. Why do you ask?”
“You’re so beautiful and offering me drugs.
I thought maybe I died and went to heaven, and you was an angel assigned
to help me cross over.”
She touched me. “I’m your nurse,” the
woman pointed to a name tag on her uniform that announced she was Dorothy Gotti,
R.N. “My friends all call me Dottie,”
she smiled.
Nurse Gotti talked sweetly as she pulled back the sheets. “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember crawling through some trailer
over where the train wreck happened?
Well, a smashed trailer collapsed in on you. Don’t you remember?” She stroked my head.
“Fortunately for you, you were found by a dog sniffing around all the trailer
wreckage. That dog barked and barked
something terrible until that scrap metal dealer came by to investigate. And he found you. Or maybe I should say, he noticed a table leg
sticking out where it shouldn’t. Do you
remember?”
I was feeling too naked and cheap to remember much of anything, or at least,
anything I would care to admit to. Nurse
Gotti rolled me on my side, all the better to stick me.
“You were rushed into ER with a plastic table leg augured deep into your
backside. You were screaming, so we
quickly extruded the table leg and got you pretty doped up.” She smiled down at me and patted my hand,
“Nobody likes screamers.”
I felt a little prick of a needle as she asked, “When was the last time you had
solid food?”
“I had a hotdog and some beans awhile back.
Oh yeah, and I had some brownies.”
“Well, you were pretty malnourished when we got a hold of you, and your blood
alcohol levels were off the chart.” She
smiled, “How are we feeling?”
“I’m feeling kind of numb,” I sighed as a rush of painkillers
percolated through my body.
“Well you’ve been here over 48 hours, and that’s 46 hours more than what’s
allowed for bypass recovery, let alone rectal extractions. So please wait right here while I print out the
invoice.”
As Nurse Gotti was leaving she turned back and said, “Oh, and by the way, just
because you were whacked out on morphine at $500 a shot doesn’t mean we didn’t
do each and every procedure itemized on your bill. I personally gave you a sponge bath, and
those don’t come cheap.”
Minutes later she returned and handed me a stack of papers.
“What?” I shouted. “You mean to tell me
I owe $124.00 for facial tissues? Facial
tissues? I got a facelift, too? Screw you guys,” I threw the crumpled bill on
the floor.
Nurse Gotti calmly picked up the papers and gently handed ‘em back to me. “Plastic?”
She smiled patiently.
I impatiently tore the papers into little pieces, but Nurse Gotti pulled out
another copy of my medical bill.
“Now, we know it’s a bit of shock,” she patted my hand. “But you have to hold on to these
papers. They’re all you have to prove
you got better.”
I peed on that copy in an amazing display of aim and dexterity, seeing as I was
still in bed and the bill was still in her hands.
In a flash, a new dry stack of papers appeared from Nurse Gotti’s pocket. This was disconcerting. She tried to soothe me, “We understand that
you, as a layperson, might not comprehend the scope of services you have been
provided.”
But before she could finish, I grabbed the damn billing statement and threw it
out the window. (That was gonna cost me
since the damn window wasn’t open.)
Nurse Gotti picked up the phone.
“Security to 306. Code: Deadbeat.”
Faster than you can spell HMO, two beefy guys in white uniforms hustled into
the room. They stuffed me into my
britches and then, between them, they put a shoulder under each of my extended
arms and frog-marched my trailing feet down the hall. I was familiar with this; I have departed
many fine establishments do’n the Drunk Jesus.
I heard Nurse Gotti yelling, “We’ll be in touch. We know where you live. We’ll send over our collection
representatives and work out a convenient, customized and personal payment plan
while you’re rehabilitating.”
Outside the St. Ides Infirmary & Community Recreation Center, I landed flat
on my face on the hot cement, and my mind desperately turned to a comforting
thought, “A cold one! A cold one! My coach for a cold one!”