A not so fabulous Friday (it's a long one...)

Friday morning I found myself in a quite embarrassing situation at the Greenbelt Metro station. I was slightly out of it as I grabbed my copy of the Express and headed towards the turnstiles—but it was 8am and I had been up late the night before—no big deal, or so I thought.

I got really lightheaded right after I passed through the turnstiles, and kind of stumbled towards the agent’s kiosk, where the military dude was placed to prevent terrorists from getting on the Metro. It must have been apparent I was about to pass out, because I remember him grabbing me and helping me gently hit the ground. I woke up a couple minutes later with my face on the cement, with the military dude and station agent grabbing various parts of my upper body and talking loudly in my face.

Do you want to go to the hospital?, someone asked. I kept trying to reassure them that fainting wasn’t a big deal, and just to let me chill for a couple minutes. My incoherent mumbling must have been unconvincing, because I heard the military dude call for an ambulance for a “semi-conscious white female” at the Greenbelt Metro station…. apparently, I was in need of medical attention.

Military dude finally got me off the ground and sat me down on a chair near the agent’s kiosk and kept asking irritating questions to keep me conscious. “Who do you live with? Where do you work? Where are you from? How long have you been here?” He got in my face and informed me I looked pale—really white, he said. “I’m always pale dumbass,” I responded, leaving out the “dumbass” part, of course. In the course of two minutes waiting for the ambulance, no less than three tourists came up to me and asked how to get to various places in D.C. Idiots.

The EMTs arrived and led me out of the station on a stretcher… but not before I started crying hysterically and begged them not to take me to the ER. I tried explaining to them that I hate being sick and was going to be late to work (look at that dedication!), but they shushed me and continued to wheel my blubbering self out through the AM rush hour people traffic. The EMT in the back of the truck was obsessed with my Apache name and asked if I was white or Indian, to which I replied, “neither, dumbass,” and pretended to doze off again. Again, I left out the “dumbass” part.

At the hospital, I got to wear a snazzy backless gown, had a blood pressure cuff permanently attached to my arm that went off every 15 minutes, provide a urine sample, got a CAT scan, an EKG, an IV, and had pints of blood drained from my veins. (I mean “drained” literally; the nurse couldn’t properly close the IV tube in my inner elbow, so blood continued to spurt out of the tube onto the bed—she had to change the sheets, clean the plastic mattress, and wipe off my arm and hands). The medical procedures happened throughout the morning, so I spent quite a bit of time sleeping and watching quality television without the volume… Maury had cheating spouses, Sports Center had something I didn’t care about, CNN was obsessed with Jeanne, and Bob Barker and his “models” looked uber-tan, as usual.

I had a visit from the hospital billing agent at some point during the day. She walked in, looked at me, looked at my chart, and asked if I was Asian. I wasn’t sure whether my Asianness would affect my hospital bill, so I told her that my first name was Apache, and my nickname was a type of Japanese sticky rice. She was clearly puzzled by this response, and proceeded to ask more relevant questions about health insurance.

I was unceremoniously released from the hospital after Dr. Mingo decided I wasn’t in danger of dropping dead. The nurse literally walked in, had me sign a release form, went over some crap about how to monitor my condition, and said I could change and go home. I finally emerged into the beautiful Friday sunshine at about 1:30. A nice shuttle driver man informed me I was in Lanham, MD, after I explained how I wound up at the hospital that morning. He then drove me to a bus stop, where I boarded the T16 bound for home.

I tried to keep from nodding off on the bus ride home by taking in the sights of Lanham. Almost immediately into my journey I came across perhaps my favorite intersection in the state of Maryland: Good Luck Road—a nod to patients and family who had to travel Good Luck Road to get to the hospital, and Gaywood—a nod to the small thicket of trees nearby that loved trees of the same gender.

I finally made it home around 3 that afternoon, drank some orange juice, fell into bed, and didn’t wake up until 4 the next morning.