That Was...Bracing

You shall be forgiven if you mistakenly thought the picture above was a still of the casualties in Atlanta in Gone With The Wind.

It was, in reality, the waiting room of Teeny Weenie ER at Shoestring General Hospital this weekend. No, really.

My personal tally: 4 strokes, 2 heart attacks, three major fractures, five automobile collision victims, a baker's dozen of abdominal pains, and about half that again of people - almost all in their 90s - suffering from Failure To Fly, leading inevitably to the dreaded FDGB: Fall Down, Go BOOM! And by some small miracle, only one(!) patient who was certifiably bat-crap crazy. My co-workers all leaned into that last pitch instead. Better them than me.

(BTW: I can reliably report that people having actual strokes and heart attacks will drive themselves to the hospital about 1 time out of 3, rather than calling the paramedics to bring the ER to their living room for a pick-up, so think about that when you decide to cut off the geezer in front of you driving a little distracted.)

There are days I should get paid for patients by the pound, and this was a triple dose of that.

If we want to switch to pay based on how sick they were, I managed to fill up all the hospital's available ICU beds two nights out of three. They're not talking my calls any more this week. I have heard mumblings that my new nickname thereabouts is "Trainwreck", in honor of the patient type with which I've been gifting them.

Despite all that, everyone who came in with a pulse (all of them, hallelujah!) left with one, and they all left in better condition than they entered. That their efforts to shuffle off their mortal coils failed was not due to any lack of trying on their parts. It also didn't hurt that everyone at Teeny Weeny ER is a team player (and there's no "F**k You" in "Team", boys and girls), without which things wouldn't have gone so well for all concerned, and also one of the reasons I like to play at this particular body shop.

Best of all, there is no "X" in the box tonight on my line of the shift schedule. For one night in a row!
As noted in my last post, my employer and my bank will both love me, but only the prospect of pizza, two or three unseen movies to watch, and no one's life to save tonight is currently making life worth living.

Then we'll have a look around and see what dipwitted f**kery our would-be overlords and random strangers have got up to in the intervening 96 hours.

Based on my own biased sample of the world since Friday afternoon, high IQs have not broken out anywhere on the planet, so the pickings should be good in due course, and serve as proof that compared to things that really matter, like sending average people home to their family rather than wrapping them in their final plastic baggie and toe tag, there's little whatsoever that Government Idiots Inc. (but I repeat myself) do that isn't anything beyond comedy relief and an object of ridicule. 

If I could but trade the Stygian Ferry 1:1, and save my patient's lives, in return for sacrificing the minions of governance and self-proclaimed cultural icons, I'd happily walk the streets of D.C., NYFC, and Hollywood, with a pillow in hand, looking for deserving fucktards to smother in trade for the gaggle of grandmothers, uncles, sons and daughters I saw in the last 4 days' time, and what's more, the republic would be improved for every trade I made with the Grim Reaper.

If only...

And sadly, I failed to score the winning billion $$ lottery ticket, so I have to keep doing this for a couple of decades more.  I kicked a coupla bucks into the community pool, so we were hoping to hit it, just to be able to text Big Boss that 57 of us were all quitting when we collectively hit the jackpot. It would have been worth it to see the looks on the faces. Perhaps another time. And Fat Cat will not be dining on crab and steak, but she's announcing that I didn't have permission to ignore her all weekend. The little furry terrorist probably found something to puke on out of spite, because that's how cats roll.

Meanwhile, there's pizza to order, discs to insert in the player, and a number of web pages and such to browse. Like a good campfire, sarcasm and mockery must be banked and fed regularly to keep them hot and useful.

I hope you all had a weekend that didn't include any time in the ER, unless you were getting paid for it.