Our Quick Guide Must Haves For The Hospital For Baby: Fill & Download for Free

Back in 2008, my wife and I decided to have another child, having already had a little girl and being very happy. As part of her medical care while my wife was pregnant, we were given an appointment at our local hospital, the Southampton General, for an ultrasound scan.We turned up for our appointment and the Doctor said the scan was fine - there was no problem with the baby. By chance, I happened to see a poster on the wall of the waiting room saying that the hospital was looking for volunteers so they could have more experience with a new, higher definition ultrasound scanner that had arrived. So, we thought we would take part to help the hospital.After the scan, the Doctor, who in subsequent years we have got to know well, told us that he had noted an interesting condition concerning the baby's heart. At the time he wasn't too worried, but it was something to look out for.At every step, there were difficulties. The new baby was the wrong way round in the womb and wouldn't turn back the right way. Finally, after a caesarean delivery, the new baby was born, a boy who we called Benjamin, after my father.That was it, we had our baby, we thought. As they had noted a point about the heart, they carried out further, much more detailed tests now the baby had been born. Then we got the news that changed our lives. The baby had a much more serious heart problem than they had previously suspected. We had more meetings with the consultant we had seen before and he advised us that our son had to have an operation in the next few days or he would die.The problem was Benjamin's little heart suffered from "aortic stenosis" - his aortic valve didn't work properly. Within his first two weeks he had what can be described as a "balloon" operation, in which a balloon catheter is placed into the aortic valve and inflated, thus opening the valve to allow the blood to flow more freely. He also appeared to have other complications concerning his heart. I don’t want to go into detail, especially as it is upsetting to me, but his situation was complicated and the consultants were worried.At the time, it was horrendously traumatic. I had, by and large, a sheltered life until that point free from any unusual trauma or problems; this hit home very hard. We did a lot of crying and pondering "why us"? The staff at the hospital were very supportive and at the General, there is a fantastic section called Ocean Ward for children with cardiac issues. They could not have been more helpful. My heart broke when I thought of my son and his struggle to live. He had to undergo so many tests and scans of all types right from the start, during which he was often in pain or discomfort, or was distressed.With enormous relief, we were told that the “balloon” operation, as I liked to call it, had been a success. I remember walking down the corridor at the hospital, with the sunlight streaming in through the large windows, and hearing the Doctor tell me it had gone well. Breathe.As he grew, it became clear that these problems weren’t going to go away, no matter how much we mourned for the type of life and good health we had wished for our son. He had very regular check ups with the consultant at the hospital and we became very familiar with the hospital and the staff. Thankfully, in himself Ben proved to generally be a very happy boy, full of fun and someone who loved life.And yet, as he grew from babyhood into being a toddler, it was clear there was more about him to cause concern than just his heart condition. As a baby, he had never quite looked into my eyes in the same way that his big sister had at that age. When we tried teaching him to talk, he would start off getting odd words, said in a rather guttural fashion, and then simply stop. Whilst he was a loving, affectionate boy, at least to his mother, he didn’t engage in the same interactions as other children. He was very different from his sister, who had almost instantly seemed to want to communicate and be involved with people. There was constant talk at our house, but none of it came from Ben.At first we wanted to ignore it; it seemed a minor situation compared to his heart problem and the medication he had to have and the constant trips to his consultant to be checked over regularly. The time came though to mention it and soon we had another appointment at a different part of the hospital, where he was assessed. He was diagnosed as being autistic. More tears from Daddy. Of course, it all made sense. Once he was diagnosed, we started to get more help. He is by and large non-verbal, although he does use words in a symbolic, labelling way.As he grew, his consultant became more concerned about his heart. The bigger he got, the more critical his complications were going to become. He had another, much bigger operation, to carry out repair work on the valves themselves. This was much, much more worrying than the one he had just after being born. Yet again, it was a success. Blissful relief.As children often do, Ben recovered well and was soon back to loving life and having fun. At school, he had help from a very special teacher who gave him lessons just for him, helping him both with his physical abilities and his speech and communication. He seemed particularly popular with the girls. Some of the girls in his class would meet him at the school gate and hold his hand to guide him into the class. Their care, it seemed to me, must have arisen from the example of loving families in their own homes and their own caring nature.Later, the Doctors decided that mechanical valves were needed to replace his existing, natural ones and Ben had more open-heart surgery to put them into place. Again, this was a success. Ben needed more drugs to prevent these artificial valves from clotting too much, in addition to the drugs he was already taking. Regular appointments at the hospital for check ups were built into our lives as a family.The next year, he became very unwell indeed and had to be rushed into hospital. When his consultant saw his condition, he realised Ben needed to have immediate surgery or he would die very quickly. Ben’s surgeon is absolutely world class. With Ben critically ill, the operation lasted all night and part of a vein in his leg had to be used to replace tissue in his heart. The two artificial valves had to be replaced as well. The skill involved in such an operation, on a small boy like Ben especially, was extraordinary.I was so traumatised by what was happening that I came close to breaking. I was at the absolute edge of what I could handle. Thankfully, the nurse in the intensive care unit who was looking after Ben (and not me) quickly spotted this and booked me an appointment with a psychiatrist looking after patients at the hospital. In essence, I completely unburdened my woes on her and this was the starting point for me of coming back to sanity. I also made use of the hospital’s chapel, which was open to anyone. I am not a religious person, far from it, but being able to sit in a large, nicely furnished, quiet room was calming.Again, thank goodness, despite the serious challenges, the operation went well. We got the impression the operation was “one for the books”. Ben’s case is far from usual, with a number of complications, and my hope is they learn a lot from dealing with his case.After each operation, Ben has to stay first in the intensive care unit for several days and then on the ward at the hospital for sometimes weeks at a time to recover. During these times he is constantly checked and monitored. His heart rate, blood pressure and temperature are all checked carefully. The nurses and other staff at the hospital are always very caring and professional in their approach. Whilst it is clear they are busy, we are always made to feel special and the centre of concern.Two years later, Ben needed more surgery. The Doctors decided that the artificial valves weren’t working that well. A routine scan had suggested a problem and they quickly decided that it was urgent and that he needed another operation. This time, the artificial valves were taken out and replaced with ones from a pig.Ben’s case continues to cause concern and within a year of this operation, he needed another one, his most recent as at the date of writing. Here, he needed another bypass as more of the vein in his leg had to be harvested to use in his heart and work was needed due to scarring from all the previous surgery he has undergone. More time at the hospital, in intensive care and on the ward. We know them and they know us after all this time.Ben’s life is very different from most children. I walk by a school every day to get to the office and often there are young boys, perhaps even as young as Ben, out on the playing field, having orders barked at them by PE teachers. It reminds me how different my son’s life is from what I expected. By and large though, he is happy and loves life. He loves his Mummy and he loves having fun. We don’t think he has the deep, dismayed understanding of his condition that a child without his severity of autism might have. His future is uncertain, though really everyone’s is – Ben’s future just has much more uncertainty than other children.The Doctors, Nurses and staff at our hospitals do the really important things in our society. Spending so much time in the intensive care unit and the special cardiac ward at the hospital has convinced me of this. Ben has, at every stage, received absolutely world class, state of the art surgery, treatment and care. He has also received huge amounts of medication to control his condition as much as possible. His recovery has also entailed physiotherapy. As well as the most professional treatment we could ever wish for, we have also been cared for with compassion and sympathy as individuals.On the NHS, all of this has been provided to us completely free of charge.If we had needed to pay for it, the fees would have eaten up all our savings and we would have been required to sell our home. Even then, I’m not sure that would have covered it all.Actually, it’s not all free. We have to pay for parking our car at the hospital. I’m outraged, honest.All of this skill, the experience, the extraordinary service, the compassion, the care – all for one poorly little baby boy. All for free.It seems to always be fashionable to belittle Britain and British society. But the NHS is the best thing about British society. I cherish it for how it has helped my son. The enormity of what we have been through escapes me a lot of the time as I find it very difficult to think about directly; I don’t want to think about what my son has gone through or what he might have to go through in the future. When I do though, and I think about the NHS and what it has done for him and us, I am proud. I am proud that we have a system that enables such extraordinary care to be given to my little boy.

WARNING: Graphic and disturbing content.Yes.. I have done so a number of times. I am not going to share any of those stories today however. Instead, I will tell you of a death notification I saw another doctor do when I was still a paramedic and medical student.I worked during my first two years of medical school. I did a couple of low paying things then decided I needed to get more out of the time away from my studies and went to work in an emergency department that hired paramedics. The experience was very good and I earned more per hour than I ever did while I was working on the street as a medic. The doctors were very supportive of me and often took time to personally mentor me as I was a second year medical student. One physician in particular was always free with his time. Dr. Walters (not his real name) was a nurse favorite. He had a reputation for extreme bluntness and his behavior in the department led to him being disciplined a number of times. He had a extremely dry sense of humor and would often have all of us laughing at the desk. He made shifts go by quickly and everyone agreed that if they were seriously ill there would be no other doctor they would want to pull them out of the fire. His bedside manner left a LOT to be desired. He was the sort of doctor you would like to keep in a box and pull out when the shit was hitting the fan.On this particular day, EMS encoded that they had an infant they were doing CPR on. They would be there in 10 minutes. We prepared the department for their arrival. The trauma bay was cleared. We opened up the pediatric crash cart and laid the Broslow tape on the bed which would guide us on appropriate drug dosages for our code. Walters hovered at the head of the bed and waited. Those few minutes spent waiting for a disaster are surreal. They seem to stretch on forever as you mentally prepare yourself for what you must do. The medics finally burst through the door. They were performing CPR on a baby. As we moved the baby over to the ER bed I saw blood under the child. I assumed it was from an IV stick the medics did in the field but they started their report with “this looked like a trauma at the scene.” they went on to give a hurried report about how they were called for a choking infant but arrived to find the father of the child essentially doing nothing. The baby was in full arrest when they arrived. There was blood in the diaper. The described the scene as extremely sketchy. The dad was the only parent on the scene until they got ready to go when the mom showed up. He was oddly unconcerned and the mom was absolutely freaking out. They felt the dad had somehow hurt the baby.We did what we normally do. I will spare you the details here. In the course of evaluating the baby he was completely unclothed and there was fairly extensive trauma noted in the per-anal area. The baby was obviously sodomized recently. Our efforts were not successful. I was just one of a team of people caring for the baby but Walters looked at me and asked me to go with him to notify the family that we were not successful. When we arrived in the family room it was full of people. Walters walked in first and identified the parents who were sitting together in a group of other people. The mother looked up at him expectantly and Walters simply said “well, your baby is dead”. My mouth actually dropped open at his bluntness. the family was also shocked to say the least and many started crying now openly. Walters just stood there and I shifted uncomfortably back and forth while the discomfort stretched out. The father then looked up and asked Walters “what do you think happened” to which Walters said, “it looks like someone fucked him to death with a clothes hanger”. At this point the father jumped to his feet and started to run out the door. Walters tripped him intentionally and he smashed face first into the door frame. Walters would later deny that he did this on purpose but I know the truth. The guy ended up with a huge contusion on his forehead with a small laceration. He pulled himself from the floor and jogged/scrambled outside the department. Walters looked at me and said “let’s go” and without another word we turned and went back to the department where he called the police.The police arrived and the baby was taken by the medical examiner for autopsy. It was indeed abuse and the father was arrested and convicted. The mother was as well because of prior issues. Amazingly, Walters never got into trouble for that event. I was never asked about what happened because nobody ever complained. Walters later transferred to another hospital. For my graduation from medical school he gave me the largest bottle of Scotch Whisky I have ever seen. Some years later, when I was finished with emergency medicine residency, I ran into Walters again. He told me that he was an alcoholic and addict and that he had been clean and sober for 5 years at that point. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

No point reading this without first reading Emily Fisher's answer to What is one moment in your life you thought could only happen in a movie?, my answer just before this one, Part 1.Then you get the King Kongclusion:When I headed back to the same movie theater the following Friday night for the same 10:45 showing of King Kong, pretty much every muscle in my entire body was still screaming ABUSE!, more so, in fact, than on the morning after the crazed event.What could possibly have made me feel I’d climbed Mt. Everest balanced on my hands while someone on my back was strangling me???Throughout the week I’d been flooded with questions I was determined not to seek answers to until I returned to the theater same day of the week/same show, as I was hoping to find the same staff on hand as the previous week, increasing my chances of firsthand accounts of my shenanigans.I began guzzling alcohol in private about a year after my first drink, as it took that long to recover from this: Emily Fisher's answer to What is your worst hangover story?.I’d started meeting interesting older people, artists and such, but was still stuck with my inability to speak to any but dogs and children. Alcohol broke that crippling spell, turned me into the witty, charming being I was in my mind.My first word, at 9 months old, was MORE,and I’ve continued to live by the More is Better/Too Much is Never Enough motto, meaning I spent many nights drunkenly charming folks for the 7 years leading up to finding George, too often waking up unable to remember a damn thing.When in 1976, at 21, I ran away with George (Emily Fisher's answer to How did you meet the love of your life, whether or not you married him or her, or if it was reciprocated?), the minute we stepped onto the ferry, my lifelong shyness instantly evaporated, and I’ve never had the slightest difficulty speaking to anyone ever again.And so for 40 years, no longer drinking to combat shyness, I never came anywhere close to blacking out... until the King Kongscapades.Now here I was, 50 years old, attempting to reactivate a missing memory for the first time. I was drawn back to the movie theater because I thought maybe faces and things might trigger something, though never once had anything done that during my black-out era.The multiplex parking lot was no longer ice and snow covered when I returned the following Friday night. I tried not to let that stark difference interfere with what I hoped would be a re-enactment of sorts.As I parked the car, my heart started to pound; walking into the flames was adrenalizing me. I mean, imagine the balls on a bitch re-entering an unknown snake pit of her own making, all geared toward embarrassing the fuck out of her!Thankfully, I’ve been pretty much unembarrassable since this: Emily Fisher's answer to What is the most embarrassing moment of your life? so I was more excited than anything else. Maybe a bit nervously excited, but definitely excited. I didn’t fear embarrassment, and hoped for a good laugh at my expense.Last time I’d gotten to the theater later than intended, and it was absurdly packed. Granted, I was unintentionally tripping at the time, but not being used to that kind of atmosphere made it feel like the inside of a Vegas casino, overly bright, colorful, and LOUD.It still felt that way this time, though without my faux LSD, it was far less pleasant, and didn’t include the world’s cutest baby. Sure, I could have come at a less obnoxious time, but my venture wouldn’t be shit without doing it right. It felt necessary to mimic the previous week’s entry as closely as possible.The lines to get tickets were 3 times as long this week. I guess King Kong got rave opening week reviews. They’d hooked up red velvet rope railings to create 4 separate lines that began as soon as you stepped through the big glass front doors.So I entered the blinding clamor and just had to stand there, right inside the door, at the end of one of the long slow lines to the ticket booths. It was a real game killer, a dragging plot line in my secret agent story.I had a feeling I might have some luck with the crew at the popcorn counter, had some sense of having been there. I thought I better make sure to get a ticket before beginning the official investigation, but I hadn’t expected such a long line, or to be too far from the popcorn counter to see anything while on the line.The line was barely moving, and I realized a secret agent wouldn’t spend time mumbling about the conditions, but start taking in as many details as possible.Intently calming my breath, I directed my gaze to the corner by the doors, and began a slow staring sweep of the joint. When I got to the next corner on that first wall, I gasped.There was a uniformed guard leaning against the wall, looking directly at me, a swirling din of people between us. It felt like Tony and Maria spotting each other for the first time, across the loud crowded room at the dance.No memories came flooding in on sight of the guard, not into my head, anyway. But my heart remembered something not recalled by my brain, and it wasn’t wasting any time saying so; my heart was pounding audibly.Before thinking of a thing to say, I’d jumped out of line as quickly as I had for the baby the previous week, and I ran to him.He was probably in his early 30’s, and could have been one of my Mexican border homeboys, a muscled, tattooed, earringed movie thug with giant puppy dog eyes. His name tag said “Pedro”.“Um, I was here last Friday and I can’t remember a thing,” I began, “but I have a feeling you can — you remember me, right?”He nodded, noncommittally.“Can you tell me what happened? I just remember being on line here, and the next I knew I was hosed down naked on a gurney with a tube in my arm attached to the ceiling. What happened?”He sort of tipped his head at me, then turned and walked away, not yet having spoken a word.No! I knew he knew something! Why wouldn’t he tell me? But then here he was again, back, up close, looking deep into my eyes with those puppy pools of his.“Hi, Emily,” Pedro said, “I thought you might be back.”He’d walked away because he knew we needed some time to talk, so he’d gotten someone to replace him at his post.“So you don’t remember a damn thing,” he said in an accent that made me homesick.“Nope, nothing. Seeing your face moved me somehow, but I got no idea why.”“That must be pretty frustrating for a writer.”“What the fuck, you know I’m a writer?”“I know a lot about you, Emily.”“Like what?”“I know you live in the mountains by the Mexican border in a horseshoe canyon you call Herradura.”“I told you that?” I asked.“In Spanish,” Pedro replied.“I don’t speak Spanish!”“You did that night,” he said, “You talked in Spanish to me almost exclusively. Told me how homesick you were for the desert, the border.”“How the fuck was I speaking Spanish?” I asked, at the same time remembering the years of proof that a certain degree of alcohol sometimes turned me into a pool shark.“I know your mother is dying, your cousin is dead, and a woman online broke your heart,” he continued, “but I already knew you liked women.”“How’d you know that?”“Because you were grabbing asses!”“Whose asses?”“Mostly those women selling popcorn over there.”“How was I getting at asses behind the counter?”“You really wanna know?”“Actually, I wanna know everything!”“Actually, you leapt over the damn counter! You’re a quick, slippery thing!”“Alright, how bout we start at the beginning?”“You sure you wanna hear everything?”“Please, don’t hold back!”“Hell, I know your mother has a flat ass!”“What the fuck.”Pedro guided me over to a two top table he said I’d been writing on at some point. I could either feel or imagine that.He had seen me way across the room, writing at this very table, mouth moving as though I was talking to myself, too far away to hear. Sometimes I tugged at my hair.Then he got called away for something and forgot about the writing woman until a little later he got a walkie talkie alert that there was trouble up front.He went over to where I was sitting against the wall, loudly sobbing and moaning and repeatedly banging my head on the concrete floor.Those tender lumps all over my head!“That woman must have really fucked you up,” Pedro now said, “I know that shit can get you even worse than family dying.”“So then what happened?”“I started talking to you, asked you what was wrong. You told me later that you were comforted by my Mexican accent, but all I knew was that I asked you that, you stopped crying right away, and looked up at me with a giant grin on your face.“Then you just started yapping like we’d always known each other. In Spanish.”“Shut up with your ‘in Spanish’! Shut up!”“I swear! I know you grew up in Englewood, that you like Black women but the love of your life is a man who died. And his son built your castle.““Shut up! Shut up! But don’t you dare! Tell me more!”“I know you drank a bucket of Scotch up at the yuppie restaurant. And you hate yuppies.”“Okay, you know every fucking thing about me — ““I know you say ‘fuck’ a lot.”“Got me, but what happened?”“I’d been sent over to either calm you down or kick you out, but you stopped crying as soon as I started talking to you. Can’t exactly say you calmed down, though.”“Wadaya mean?”“I wanted to cheer you up, and, um...”“What?”“I think you got... a little too cheery! You wanted popcorn, and I thought I better follow you, wasn’t really sure you wouldn’t flip back again. There are some buxom Latinas selling popcorn over there, and, um, that may have been the cause of your cheeriness.”“What’d I do?”“You got kind of giggly and grabby and mouthy...”“In Spanish, I assume?”“Some version of it, mm hmm.”“Fuck. Are they here now?”“Yup.”“Will you point out which ones I harassed, so I can apologize? I’m appalled!”Pedro walked me over to the popcorn counter, but he didn’t have to point out anyone, because 2 of the women instantly made me throb.“It’s those 2 right there, isn’t it?” I hissed at Pedro.“Yup.”I like to own my shit, and have little respect for those who don’t, so I marched right over and took care of business, told them I didn’t remember a thing, but Pedro was filling me in, I heard I’d been harassing them and I wanted to apologize.They giggled all over each other, Teresa and Juanita, and said it’d been kind of fun seeing something different last week, that I’d really cranked up the action.At that point I thought they were just talking about my grabby flirting (Grabby? When the fuck would I ever do that?) but nope, things had barely begun.Pedro and I walked back to the table.“Then what happened?” I asked.“When you got all crazy with Teresa and Juanita I thought I was gonna have to kick you out, but you swore you just wanted popcorn — hadn’t eaten all day at the hospital with your mother — and to see the movie.“The movie was starting in about 10 minutes, and I still wasn’t sure I should let you go inside the theater. It was my call, and as much as you amused me, I couldn’t be certain you’d be able to act right in there. But you can be very convincing.”“So what happened?”“You bought popcorn, said you had to pee before 3 hour King Kong, so I escorted you to the bathroom. Or I tried to. But you escaped.”“Escaped?”“I think you just couldn’t stand the idea of being followed, controlled, so you sprang free and took off.”“Where’d I go?”“Well, see how this area around the bathrooms is like a giant square that loops around back on itself? You just ran around the block and came up on me from behind in a sneak attack.”I giggled at the mention of one of my common childhood tricks, also used on the disciplinarian Vice Principal of the high school.“You calmed down a little after pulling a fast one on me, and went in to pee while I waited right outside. It sounded like you might have fallen down in there.”(A cause of some of my strains and bruises?)“When you came out of the bathroom, well, half your popcorn had spilled out and you were crying again, about everything at once, it sounded like. It was time to head into the movie, but I couldn’t let you go in like that, and I told you so.”“Lemme guess, I promised I’d be good?”“Exactly,” Pedro confirmed.“Then what?”“We started walking to the theater, and you got all sappy about what a beautiful person I am.”“I can imagine. You are.”“Thanks. But it was making you cry again, all the ‘unrecognized beauty in this fucked up world’. By then we were at the theater door, and you were getting loud. I shushed you and told you I was gonna kick your ass out if you didn’t chill.”And he mimicked my high squeaky voice, “But I wanna see the moooooveeeee!”[Alright, at this point I’m stopping for a political interlude. It’s not that things didn’t get worse — lots worse — but even right here, by this point, IS THERE ANY CHANCE IN HELL THIS WOULD HAVE GONE ON IF I WERE A YOUNG (or even old) PERSON OF COLOR? Deplorable Old White Lady privilege!]Pedro had made me swear a thousand times over that I was going to control myself in there, and then he guided me into the theater, unwilling to let me out of his sight until I was safely seated.It was well into the trailers by then, so it was dark in there. We stood at the top and Pedro did a visual sweep of the place, making a walkie talkie call to confirm the only seat left was in the front row.He reported that, told me he was gonna guide me down there and get me seated, while I skipped a little, because the front row is my favorite.So he led me down, just as the movie started, got me seated, made me promise a few more times, and finally left me to the movie, went back to his station out front.“No more than 15 minutes later I got a call that there was trouble in the theater. I went in, and you were standing all the way up front in the middle of the aisle with your shadow blocking half the screen.”“What was I doing standing there?”“You were roaring, and beating your chest!”I burst out laughing, then saw Pedro’s concerned looking face. “Hold up, you’re fucking SERIOUS?”“Yup. You were fucking OUT OF CONTROL! It was like we’d never spoken to each other. You were like a wild animal!”“Come on! I’m down to 90 pounds, still recovering from back surgery!”“Then I guess your surgeon deserves a Nobel Prize or some shit, cuz maaan, you were like someone in the Olympics, but I don’t know if it was for running, gymnastics, or weight lifting!“By the time they alerted me, the 2 guards who stay roaming in the theater had already been joined by 2 more. All 4 of them were trying to drag your ass out, but you kept yanking free and sort of... throwing them!”“Fucking hell! How is this even possible, little old year and a half bedridden me, post-surgical, down to skin and bones??? It’s like I was channeling my invincible 14 year old self!”“I don’t know what the fuck was going on there, or how, but your shit reminded me of the old Angel Dust days!“Your old 14 year old self? It was obvious you were channeling King Kong! You’d start roaring and chest pounding, the 4 guards would pounce on you, get you into a headlock and shit, and the next thing guards were just flying!”“What the fuck you even talking about, ‘headlock,’ what is this, my fucking origin story???”Pedro laughed. “Yeah, actually, it was kinda like that! You’d toss off the guards, and always run right back to the middle of the front, blocking the screen, roaring and pounding your chest!”“Pedro?”“Yeah?”“Guess what? About the only thing I’ve been sure of all week long was that in the hospital they’d pounded my heart back to life! My fucking chest is still so bruised, and I’d been in a hospital, poisoned — it was the one obvious explanation!“And now you’re telling me I pounded my own damn chest, what the fuck! Do you think the... ROARING I was doing could have caused this raw throat I’d thought came from a tube down my throat?”“No doubt. That was some high caliber roaring!”“I already got that all these lumps on my head are from pounding it on concrete, but I guess you’re also saying these pulled and strained muscles all over my body are from fighting off 4 grown men???”“More, actually, later on, but yeah, you gave yourself a serious workout! But there’s more! You wanna hear more?”“Always!”“So I came down the aisle and saw the roaring and pounding and guard throwing. I went up to you, just praying you had some speck of humanity left and remembered me, you were that crazed!”“Shut the fuck up.”“I got right up in front of you, facing you, my back to the screen, and called your name. Just like the first time, you heard my voice and sort of melted, looked at me with a big grin on your face.“Then before I could say a word more, YOU PROJECTILE VOMITED ALL. THE. FUCK. OVER. ME! All liquid, a bucket of Scotch and gallons of water by the look of it. Like a fucking tidal wave!”“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit,” I moaned, “I’m so sorry!”“Everything changes then.”“Wadaya mean?”“As soon as someone vomits, we have to immediately call the ambulance. It’s the law.”“Whoa!”“The ambulance gets here like in minutes, the 2 dudes pushing us out of the way. They come at you with all kinds of clinch moves, but you were like a twisting snake! You kept slithering out of their grasp!“So I guess the ambulance dudes, their job when this kind of shit happens is they call the cops. Next thing there’s 4 theater guards, 2 ambulance dudes, 2 cops, and me. I’m not usually the hands-on dude, because I’m head security, but my underlings were so out of their league.“And the truth is, once the cops are on site, we’re all out of our league. The cops take over.“So the security guards go back to their stations, and the 2 cops get to work on you with the ambulance dudes. I’m supposed to be gone by then, too, but I couldn’t desert you! I was sure they would think you were an evil tweaker of some sort, never know you’re a sensitive writer who loves women!”I suspect I was as in love at that moment as I’ve ever been in my life!“Oh, shit, I forgot something!” Pedro yelped suddenly.“What?”“The entire time all this was going on, the whole audience was shrieking, ‘SHUT UP!!! SIT DOWN!’ and half the joint emptied out, all asking for their money back!”Alright, that right there, more than anything! I’d have been hauled off to jail so long ago if I weren’t a white old lady!Pedro’s heroics weren’t over yet. He hung back a bit but followed the crew who’d finally firmly bound all 4 of my limbs, which didn’t stop me from continuing to furiously twist my body in ways humans shouldn’t even move.Gradually, they made it to the back door of the ambulance, which was open, waiting for me. Pedro said I must have activated the supercharge switch or something, because they simply could not get me through the large gaping door.Somehow I remember a flash of this part, me fighting a horde of evils trying to get me into the back of an ambulance, me knowing that absolutely cannot happen, because I’d be busted, my family would know, and the entire world would end.I remember it in bright red and yellow, the lights from the ambulance coating the dark brisk December night.Things seemed to be at a Just-Before-Blood standstill when Pedro had his brilliant idea.“You just have to give her her journal!” Pedro commanded.“What journal?” asked the cops.“Gimme her bag,” Pedro said.Someone passed him my bag, Pedro fished in it, and came up with my journal. He inserted himself between me and the cops and handed it over.“PEDRO!!!!” I apparently moaned, “I LOVE you!” and I calmly walked myself into the back of the ambulance, scribbling as I went.So that was the sudden crazed illegibility I’d discovered in my journal the morning after! I was writing while being raced to the hospital — the report shows it took us only 4 minutes to get there!Pedro also told me the cops kept asking for my personal information which I refused to give. He was surprised I’d entered the hospital unconscious, because once unconscious, the cops were supposed to rummage through my shit and find my I.D. even if I’d refused to let them see it when conscious.Turns out, the reason it never got down to my family finding out and my life being ruined is that I maintained my Washington State residency for 25 years while living first in LA, and then in Arizona.I did this to save money, since Washington State had no state taxes. But the outcome was that my driver’s license showed me living in Seattle, where I hadn’t, by then, stepped foot, for years, the corresponding phone number was long dead, and there were no I.C.E. numbers listed in my phone.Nobody anywhere had a clue who I was but Pedro, and he wasn’t talking. I don’t have to believe in a deity in order to believe in a guardian angel. Pedro! I may not even know your last name, but I’ll love you forever!