Part Two

This post is a sequel to my previous post about having a sandpaper in my throat. Know what? That damn sandpaper just refused to go away after taking three medicine cups, equilvalent to six tablespoons, of Tylenol Severe Cold syrup, four Nyquil liquid gels, two Advil pills, and 13 straight hours of sleep. I did have a fever and I got better but my throat still hurt as if there’s broken glass inside my throat, so I knew I had a strep throat and had to get antibiotics. Where to get the antibiotics? I wish I could pretend to be a doctor and write myself a prescription and just get over to CVS pharmacy and get it. I tried calling around DC to get an appointment but most of them are full till next week. I can’t wait that long so I had no choice but go to the hospital. I called the Howard University Hospital (the closest to where I live) to see if they have an interpreter on call and they said yes. So I got myself there, signed in and I waited, waited. And I waited. About four hours later, they finally got me into a patient’s room. Turned out there was no interpreter but on tv, like VP except it was a poor quality. The interpreter had a hard time understanding what I wanted to say. What’s more, prior to that, the nurses spent a half hour just to get the TV working and get the interpreter to answer. Then, a black doctor came and he didn’t even look at me at all, he looked to the TV interpreter to talk to me. He asked me what’s wrong with me. I said I had a strep throat so I need antibiotics. He said “Uh-huh, we’ll see about that.” We went through normal routine and I must admit, it was kinda funny having a TV presence in the room. Then the doctor said, “Mm-hmm, you probably have a strep throat”, and said thank you to the TV interpreter, then he just left the room. I waited for like a half hour in the room and I was like “WTF is going on” so I decided to get out and checked what’s going on. A nurse saw me and waved at me, “come here.” I came to the desk and the nurse said “here’s your checkout form”. I thought “Oh great, why didn’t you just pass that under the door while I was waiting?” I signed my name as fast as I could and the outside was already dark by the time I got out.

I was so exhausted when I got out of the hospital and I had to take the metro to get back home as I didn’t drive to the hospital. As I was waiting for the metro subway to come, I see two kids standing next to their father. The subway opened doors and I went through the doors and was about to sit down on a two-seat empty row. As I was sitting down, I immediately noticed that every other row had already been taken by either one seat or two and I got this instinct feeling that the two kids wouldn’t want to sit separate, so I got up and walked to the next empty seat, leaving the entire row open for the kids to sit down. I sat down opposite side and I felt something was looking behind my back so I turned my head. The little girl was looking at me and she had this happy look on her face. I turned back and thought “Even if I’m having an awful day, it doesn’t mean you still can’t do a nice thing for someone.” The doors closed and the metro subway started to move forward.

P.S. Don’t ever go to Howard University Hospital, which actually means “HUH?”