Dad calls at 4:45 when I’m packing up my desk for the day, last night. He’s in pain again. We agree to meet in the waiting room of St Michaels again.

After 4.5 hours (2.5 in the waiting room, 2 hours in the emergency corral) Da is finally given a drip with some pain killers in it (gravol/morphine). I stayed with him as long as I could but started to nod off at 11. Da was groggy enough to sleep and sent me home.

It’s so sad and maddening that Emergency is full of whiny, spoiled, adult children, fakers and tweaked out crackheads. All of them clogging up the system for people who are legitimately needing urgent care. Two curtains over, a woman with second degree burns on her hand was loudly complaining to anyone who could hear her. Of course she needed to be seen but her behaviour while at the hospital just mired down the staff. Her cell phone calls (I thought they were banned? No nurse challenged her to shut it off) to her “boyfriend” who would hang up on her repeatedly (“and that is just duressing (sic) me more!” she shouted down the phone). During one of her many calls, she snapped at 2 nurses and the doctor on duty because they interrupted her to take her temperature and demanded to see “The Manager of the Hospital”. She was taking names and kicking ass! When threatened to be left alone and/or discharged, she started to cry and became apologetic – to the entire Emergency department, security guards and other patients. Clearly she was more lonely than sick.

Meanwhile, the occupant in the curtain cube next to Da was farting and burping a lot, which made me giggle. I stopped giggling when the doctor came to tell Farty that the blood test they got back indicated that he might have had a mild heart attack, hence the acid reflux. While he was jovial the entire time with the doctor, when he got that news he became deathly solemn. He took out his ire by muttering that Lonely Burn Woman needed to “shut the fuck up”, which got Da giggling and passing comments back to Farty. They bonded a bit then.

Farty was wheeled out and replaced with a family who laughed and joked but would instantly become grave and frail when the doctor came to investigate. Can you say “I need a doctor’s note”? They kept up the party until Da was taken from Emergency to the Gastronomic floor, at 7:30am.

He’s sleeping now after spending a morphine night in that god awful room.