In the last twenty years of my mother's life, I spent a lot of time in hospital emergency rooms. A lot. One year, I was in them eight times because of her, I believe…and it wasn't always the same one. When I took her in, we went to Kaiser, which is where she had her health insurance. When paramedics took her in, they took her to whichever hospital was closest and "open." When one isn't, that doesn't mean the emergency room has closed down and everyone has gone home. It means they're so busy that they're not accepting emergency patients brought in by paramedics at that time.
When my mother felt ill enough to push her little "I need help" button, I'd be notified and I'd race over there. From my home to hers was fifteen minutes with traffic, a little under ten without. Since her attacks usually came around 4 AM, it was usually without but the paramedics still usually got there before I did. If they weren't already taking her to Kaiser, I'd press them nicely to take her there.
Kaiser had all her records. A lot of the staff there knew her…and knew me. And if they took her somewhere other than Kaiser, she was just going to get moved to Kaiser as soon as she was well enough to be moved. Her primary care physician was at Kaiser and he was a V.I.D. there (Very Important Doctor) so I could drop his name, or the names of other doctors there I knew, to make sure she got the best possible treatment. So that's why I always tried to get her in there.
Sometimes, they could get her in there. Once or twice, I called over and talked to Kaiser folks I knew there and they arranged for her to be admitted even though they were at that moment "closed." Incidentally, the paramedics — actually, they were always firemen from a nearby station — were uniformly efficient and helpful and everything you'd want emergency personnel to be. So were all but a tiny handful of those we dealt with at Kaiser.
This story, which I told here on 1/29/07 occurred at Kaiser. I spent a lot of time at that hospital and of course, being a writer, spent a lot of time watching and studying everything that went on around me. I don't think we ever had a visit to the emergency room that, along from helping my mother, didn't leave me with a couple of "slice of life" anecdotes like this one…
There was a woman, right across from where my mother was being treated, who'd been severely injured. Her name was Lily and I overheard her doctor say something about lacerations and contusions and he also used much more complicated medical nouns that sounded even more painful. Then I heard him mutter something about, "…her husband beating the crap out of her." That kind of thing happens, of course, and we know it happens. Still, it's jarring to see the results of it right in front of you, as done to an actual human being. They weren't attractive.
It was perhaps an hour later that I was sitting on a couch in the hallway outside the emergency room making a cellphone call. A tall, well-dressed man walked up to me, sat down and — completely ignoring the fact that I was in the middle of a conversation — he began asking me if I was ready to accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour or if I was instead prepared to burn in Hell…those apparently being the only two possible options.
You may know the pitch. It's one of those stories that makes God and Jesus sound like egomaniacal dictators who'll condemn you to torture, no matter how else you've lived your life, if you don't pay proper fealty to their names. Helped the poor? Saved innocent lives? That's nice…but if you haven't taken your loyalty oath, you spend All Eternity in the firepit next to Hitler, Saddam Hussein and the guy who green-lights all those Rob Schneider movies.
I gave him my standard reply when confronted by such people. I tell them that whatever they want to believe is their right, and I'll fight to the death, blah blah blah. But I'm suspicious of a religious sales shpiel that's delivered like someone selling magazine subscriptions. I don't buy cookies from total strangers who approach me with a five-minute prepared speech so I'm certainly not going to change my faith that way. I also threw in, as I sometimes do, that I think it cheapens their message to sell their beliefs almost the exact same way kids in college used to try to sell me marijuana. (There were also people at U.C.L.A. then pushing Jesus. I'll bet the marijuana vendors got a lot more takers.)
The man realized he was not about to make a sale so he apologized, told me he'd pray for me to someday see the light and departed. You may have already guessed where this story is going.
An hour later, I was back in the E.R., waiting outside my mother's cubicle while a nurse inside tended to one of those matters that is best done with the son out of the room. Suddenly, I saw the well-dressed man wandering about in the ward and he wasn't wearing one of the Security Badges that we all had to wear in there. One of the nurses spotted him, too. She pointed and yelled with great alarm, "He shouldn't be in here!" A security guard hurried over and after a brief quarrel, the religious pitchman was escorted out.
I assumed it was because he'd been going around asking the sick and injured if they're ready to accept Jesus Christ, which would be annoying enough. But then someone explained to me that he was the husband who beat the crap out of Lily. I don't know if there is an Afterlife but if there is, I'm betting I fare better in it than he does.