Falling Down

So after a long night with a nasty headache I finally got to sleep at around 5 o'clock this morning.

At seven thirty I was awakened by loud banging on my bedroom door. Being that this never happens, I immediately woke up a little panicky and I grabbed my .45, expecting the worst. I said something; I can't remember what. I might have cussed a little, I don't know, but a deep male voice called out, "Fire Department!"

Well, visions of the house being a smoking pyre of death filled my head and I opened the door. I could see two fireman standing there looking at me, and one of them told me that Grandma had fallen and couldn't get up. I threw my gun on the bed and walked out into the living room, and saw Grandma sitting in the middle of the living room walkway in a lawnchair, blood everywhere and all over her clothes and most of her arm a mass of blood blisters and bruises. It looks awful.

She did the same thing a couple of months ago, when she fell down in the back yard and couldn't get back up again, so she crawled into the house to call me on the phone to come and pick her up.

This morning, she was coming back from picking up the mail, and accidentally dropped a letter on the driveway. She didn't have her cane as usual, and as wobbly as she's been lately, it's no surprise that when she bent down to pick the letter up, she face planted into the rocks in the yard and skinned, well, everything. She's got a goose egg on her forehead right between the eyes and is missing skin on her elbow and forearm. It looks nasty. She hurt her wrist as well, though the X-rays were normal.

I took her to urgent care,the doctor told me she might have a concussion, and to watch out for the next two weeks for any slurring or headaches or her complaining of feeling funny. She's doing all right now, although she's gonna be regretting the whole thing in the morning. The doctor said she's gonna feel like she got hit by a truck.

My Anger

You know, I spent three and a half hours of agony in the Urgent Care waiting room this morning, listening to a noisy chick in her early twenties with a huge tramp stamp and a bad dye-job yakking on the phone and telling everyone in the waiting room all about her brand new shiny kidney-and-urinary tract infection and how her stupid jerk ex-boyfriend wouldn't watch her kid so she could sleep all day because he had to go to work and isn't he just an A-hole? And then I got to listen the overly loud TV as first the news, and then back to back episodes of Law and Order that the stupid nurse just had to watch came on.

This nurse was a big, black, in-your-face stereotype with three-foot long extensions and purple scrubs and was an unpleasant, sullen creature who I named Big Nasty in my head, and no freakin' wonder she was so awful, given the things she fills her mind with! Both episodes of that show she was watching were just effing filled with the most horrible things imaginable! I swear, this is what Law and Order is all about--the most detestable criminals imaginable committing the worst crimes imaginable, and the most detestable cops imaginable acting like sociopaths and committing crimes themselves to catch the criminals. I hate it all.

Have you ever noticed that people who watch this crap show are always depressed and angry? I have. Everybody who watches these freaking stupid procedural cop dramas are alway depressed. I've observed this, and it drives me nuts. Feeling depressed? Turn off the TV! It rots your brain, didn't anybody ever tell you that! Geez!

So after one and a half episodes of this excrement, I'd had enough. I grabbed one of the chairs in the waiting room and took it outside and sat in the heat. There I was, in the peace and quiet and trying to unwind without much success, until a few minutes later another one of the nurses came out and asked me why I was outside, I think because I'd taken one of their chairs with me.

I was exhausted and stressed and still feeling mean about the TV, but I didn't want to take it out on her, so I put a grudging smile on my face and pointed at the TV inside and said, "I'm done listening to that s*** on the TV! It's absolutely unacceptable! Really, I can't take it anymore."

I was trying to be nice, and kept smiling with my lips, but I know my eyes weren't smiling and I could feel the edge in my voice, and I think she did too. She was a pretty little black girl, and seemed kind of sweet and I towered over her, and there I was all sweaty and angry and foul-mouthed, and she got this look on her face like she was a little scared of me, which made me feel bad, so I sat down and told her I'd bring the chair back in when they got done with Grandma. She told me she'd turn the TV off for me and that I should come back into the cool office. I said that'd be cool, and brought the chair back inside.

I felt like kind of a tool, until I saw Big Nasty glaring at me from her desk. Suddenly I felt vindicated, and a little happy to have foiled her. Take that, Big Nasty!

Was I wrong?