O Come, O Come Emmanuel

There’s nothing like a visit to a hospital’s emergency room to put life in perspective. I’ve been there and done that as both a patient and visitor. This past week I was the latter on more than one occasion. And working with the assumption that everything has a beginning, middle, and end, I did a little math while vegetating there. I concluded that based on my chronological age—fifty-something—I’m at the beginning of the end. And even that might be wishful thinking.

One stopover found me in the ER waiting room with a never-ending parade of walk-in business. Some of the people turning up looked quite ill and fatigued; others left me wondering what they were there for. A teenager was there with his mother. The entire time—hours—he was playing with his smartphone and jabbering like a car service dispatcher to God only knows.

Sitting in a curtained space in the thick of things a few days later, I momentarily thought actor Jonathan Banks was on the scene and pacing to and fro. As things turned out it was not him, but a dead-ringer for Mike Ehrmantraut. He was a visitor who, apparently, couldn’t stand still. It’s what I get for binge watching Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul. In my drowsy state of mind in that chaotic environment—with all the bells and whistles—life imitated art or some such thing.

On the ER drama front, a woman in an adjoining space was backed up big-time. Laxatives were the first order of business. When doctors asked her if she drank, she replied, “Moderately.” I took that answer to mean she was a lush. She was also repeatedly calling out for Grace, her sister, and some fellow named Emmanuel. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” I sang to myself. “And ransom captive Israel.” As a kid that last line always struck me as odd. I can’t say that it is any less so as an adult.

Suffice it to say, the hits just kept on coming in the emergency room. A man a couple of curtains down, I overheard, had a huge blood clot in one leg and considerable ones in each of his two lungs. The doctors attending to him seemed very concerned that time was of the essence. He didn’t speak a word of English and family members were on hand to translate. At one point the medical team was endeavoring to convince him that his lunch demands were out of order. An imminent procedure necessitated an empty stomach. 

Finally, there was this eccentric old gal walking around the ER, but unlike Mike Ehrmantraut, she wasn’t the strong and silent type. She was an impatient patient and demanding answers to this, that, and the other thing. At one point she was told to get back to her bed or security would be called. Her persistence paid off when she found a passing nurse to show her how to put on a neck brace. When it was time to take her the blood pressure, the wacky wanderer initially refused to take off her respectable Republican cloth coat. After some coaxing, she consented but then shrieked that the blood pressure sleeve was hurting her. And so it went in the emergency room. I am left only to wonder what became of all of the above.

(Photos one, three, four, and five from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)