Dad calls at 4:45 when I’m packing up my desk for the day, last night. He’s in pain again. We agree to meet in the waiting room of St Michaels again.

After 4.5 hours (2.5 in the waiting room, 2 hours in the emergency corral) Da is finally given a drip with some pain killers in it (gravol/morphine). I stayed with him as long as I could but started to nod off at 11. Da was groggy enough to sleep and sent me home.

It’s so sad and maddening that Emergency is full of whiny, spoiled, adult children, fakers and tweaked out crackheads. All of them clogging up the system for people who are legitimately needing urgent care. Two curtains over, a woman with second degree burns on her hand was loudly complaining to anyone who could hear her. Of course she needed to be seen but her behaviour while at the hospital just mired down the staff. Her cell phone calls (I thought they were banned? No nurse challenged her to shut it off) to her “boyfriend” who would hang up on her repeatedly (“and that is just duressing (sic) me more!” she shouted down the phone). During one of her many calls, she snapped at 2 nurses and the doctor on duty because they interrupted her to take her temperature and demanded to see “The Manager of the Hospital”. She was taking names and kicking ass! When threatened to be left alone and/or discharged, she started to cry and became apologetic – to the entire Emergency department, security guards and other patients. Clearly she was more lonely than sick.

Meanwhile, the occupant in the curtain cube next to Da was farting and burping a lot, which made me giggle. I stopped giggling when the doctor came to tell Farty that the blood test they got back indicated that he might have had a mild heart attack, hence the acid reflux. While he was jovial the entire time with the doctor, when he got that news he became deathly solemn. He took out his ire by muttering that Lonely Burn Woman needed to “shut the fuck up”, which got Da giggling and passing comments back to Farty. They bonded a bit then.

Farty was wheeled out and replaced with a family who laughed and joked but would instantly become grave and frail when the doctor came to investigate. Can you say “I need a doctor’s note”? They kept up the party until Da was taken from Emergency to the Gastronomic floor, at 7:30am.

He’s sleeping now after spending a morphine night in that god awful room.

Da, SharkBoy and I are at St Michaels Emergency ward again, waiting for a gurney for Da to come available. Yet again, the goober in my father’s gut rears it’s ugly head and dehydrates him to the point of a hospital visit for IV. But this time Da has a magical note from his doctor not just to dump a few litres of liquid into him, but to up the pain killers (Da was hoping for morphine. Great. Seventy five and a junkie on the streets).

Any writer who wants to convey the weirdness of humanity should go and sit in a hospital waiting room. Across from us there was a reasonably calm youth in handcuffs with accessorized policemen on either arm. He announced loudly “No. I am through with laughing. I am through with laughing at the police. I am through with making fun of the system.” Suddenly we’re privy to his studio skills as he breaks into timed ranting rapping (Which was horrible. His metering was all off and I don’t think he understood the concept of “rhyme”). Midway through this show, enter the nurse and calls him in. He stands, not an easy feat with cuffs, continuing with his little song and gets sucked into the system, cops in tow.

The TV is blaring about the US Primaries. I turn to my father after a long pause. “Who’s your favorite Democrat?”

“Oprah,” he grimaces through his discomfort. Still has it!

After a while, they wheel in an elderly gentleman across from us who’s illness is not obvious, other than he looks groggy. Moments later, another youth, sans police escort, enters. After placing a magazine on a chair, the youth sits on it, believing he’s beat any surface viruses. He snaps up the receiver of the public phone beside his chair and makes a call. Within seconds, he falls asleep with the phone wedged between shoulder and ear. Another cop, who had brought in a woman in pajamas, shakes him awake, only after letting the entire waiting room see this stupendous stunt of balancing. “I was just I had I fell asleep because thanks okay sure!” he mutters. Enter a cabbie who announces loudly “Deedenyoneorderweeltranz?” We all look at each other and wordlessly transmit What did he say?

“Deedenyoneorderweeltranz?” he repeats faster, louder.

“Uh,” says the groggy senior.

“Whereyougo?”

“Spadina and mumble.”

“No. You are not my ride. Deedenyoneorderweeltranz?” No reply. Exeunt cabbie and dazed youth.

After a two hour wait, an plump Irish nurse comes out of the emergency doors and with hands splayed, offers “We haven forgetten ye!” in thick brogue. Da is in heaven. He’s taken in a few minutes after that. He was swallowed up too, past the doors of Emergency, given the drip and I don’t hear from him until the next day, groggy from the morphine.