Up too late
My dad's in the emergency room right now and I'm at home waiting to hear what's up. As I was sitting here waiting, I realized how much times have changed. In the past, the long ago distant past, my brother and I would head up to the hospital and hang out in the waiting room for hours while mom was off somewhere in the bowels of the hospital with my dad. We might get an update once and a while if we were lucky, but for the most part we just sat there for hours until he was either released to go home or admitted. That could take all all night or all day. Eventually we got wise to the process and realized we were providing no real benefit to my mom or my dad by cooling our heels in the waiting room so we'd just stay home until mom could give us a call from a pay phone. The problem with pay phones though is you gotta have change and who remembers to grab change when rushing off to the emergency room? And on the receiving end of the call you have to stay parked by the phone at home to grab the call because you can't call back if you miss it. Keep in mind this is the emergency room part of the process. Once someone is admitted in a regular room, there's phone access to the room or if they get put in ICU then you can call the nurses desk. But the emergency room part of it is always a no-man's land. However, this time, thanks to the convenience of cell phones, my mom can call me from that no-man's land and give me updates. And if I miss the call because I'm in the restroom or I dozed off then I can call her back. It's an awesome convenience, but you know what? I still can't seem to let myself drift off to sleep and here I sit waiting...