Chapter 12: Fixed Up

When I woke up, it was to pain. When I moved it was agony. When I tried to walk to the bathroom, it was excruciating. Ruth is the soul of sympathy and support. She helped me back into bed, and brought me a pot to pee in. Then she called my parents. Dad was already at work but rushed to Ruth’s house after mom called him. Betsy and Mom arrived first. Mom asked Betsy to drive her, because dad had the car.

Quite an uncomfortable gathering. This is the first time my parents ever set foot in our home, Ruth’s and mine. Betsy was completely bewildered until mom took her aside and explained the middle aged woman is my wife and in an early stage of pregnancy, not yet obvious. Earl lives with his wife. She introduced Betsy and Ruth.

I expected Betsy to have a tantrum and make a scene. She was charming towards Ruth, helpful around the house, and solicitous of me. Dad called our family doctor. Doctors make house calls in this epoch.

The doctor came quickly, diagnosed a double hernia even quicker, and promptly ordered up an ambulance to take me to the hospital.

At the hospital, dad signed the insurance papers while mom signed the release permitting surgery. I was admitted and wheeled on a gurney to a ward that smells of disinfectant. Several beds are empty and made up with crisp linens. Other beds are occupied.

The orderlies strip off my pajamas I’d slept in, attire me in a clean, cotton, split back gown, then drag me off the gurney onto a bed, cover me with a sheet, and sequester me behind a heavy curtain.

Covered by a sheet, and curtained off into privacy, I wait.

Sometimes in life, you are completely at the mercy and under the control of others. You can either simply accept the situation and wait complacently for things to proceed, or you can panic, become hysterical, and attempt to flee. Complacently, I await my fate.

Not long did I have to wait before the chain weighted curtains were yanked noisily open, and three white garbed persons stand revealed to me. The nurse among the three, whisks over to me, places a clipboard with a form on my sheeted belly, sticks a thermometer in my mouth, and slides a rubberized band up my arm to my bicep. She pumps up the band with a squeeze bulb, applies a stethoscope to my wrist, studies her wrist watch, and presumably listens to what the stethoscope is telling her ... The two doctors in white coats, talk in low tones with each other, while the nurse gathers and enters data on the clipboard.

“Height and weight.”

She demands while extracting the thermometer and reading it. How am I supposed to know? Weighing and measuring myself is not part of my daily regimen. Can’t remember when last I stepped on a scale