A visit to the E.R.
When I woke up today, it was minus-thirteen degrees F. There was no school, thank goodness. When Karin left for her job, she had to struggle to open her car door because it was frozen shut.
At this moment, I’m at home, figuring out my Bethel students’ grades, which are due tonight. The kitties are glad I’m here. We snuggle together. Right now, though, they’re fighting.
Karin & I were away most of the weekend. From Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, we celebrated Christmas with Karin’s father’s family. Then we went home; but, a little later, we had to go to the hospital because Karin had stabbed her arm with a knife. She’d been using the knife to dig food out of a pan. The stab-wound looked about the size of a nickel, and it bled plenty, and, inside it, we could see a ghastly white tendon (at first we thought it was a bone).
Mary – rather jubilant, having just received an “A” in her Anatomy and Physiology course – drove us to the emergency room. We waited until it was Karin’s turn to be sewn up. The waiting room was quiet. Then someone began to play a TV show on his phone. There was a faint odor of marijuana.
I read in the South Bend Tribune that my students on Bethel’s basketball team had been robbed while deep-sea fishing. Those students had taken their exams early, I recalled, so that they could travel to Miami.
At last, Karin was sewn up by a doctor and a youngish nurse who cracked jokes that were full of medical jargon. Then the doctor left the nurse to finish things. The nurse asked Karin where she worked.
“At _____,” said Karin.
“Which branch?” said the nurse, and Karin told her. “I worked at that branch for nine years,” said the nurse. “I was the manager.”
How miserable, I thought. To be at the mercy of some healer; and then to find out that this person not only could do your job as well as you do it, she actually has done your job, and probably better than you do it, and for nine years.
But Karin took it in stride. Karin is much humbler than I am.
At this moment, I’m at home, figuring out my Bethel students’ grades, which are due tonight. The kitties are glad I’m here. We snuggle together. Right now, though, they’re fighting.
Karin & I were away most of the weekend. From Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, we celebrated Christmas with Karin’s father’s family. Then we went home; but, a little later, we had to go to the hospital because Karin had stabbed her arm with a knife. She’d been using the knife to dig food out of a pan. The stab-wound looked about the size of a nickel, and it bled plenty, and, inside it, we could see a ghastly white tendon (at first we thought it was a bone).
Mary – rather jubilant, having just received an “A” in her Anatomy and Physiology course – drove us to the emergency room. We waited until it was Karin’s turn to be sewn up. The waiting room was quiet. Then someone began to play a TV show on his phone. There was a faint odor of marijuana.
I read in the South Bend Tribune that my students on Bethel’s basketball team had been robbed while deep-sea fishing. Those students had taken their exams early, I recalled, so that they could travel to Miami.
At last, Karin was sewn up by a doctor and a youngish nurse who cracked jokes that were full of medical jargon. Then the doctor left the nurse to finish things. The nurse asked Karin where she worked.
“At _____,” said Karin.
“Which branch?” said the nurse, and Karin told her. “I worked at that branch for nine years,” said the nurse. “I was the manager.”
How miserable, I thought. To be at the mercy of some healer; and then to find out that this person not only could do your job as well as you do it, she actually has done your job, and probably better than you do it, and for nine years.
But Karin took it in stride. Karin is much humbler than I am.