Lindsey was supposed to be in Maryland right now, but she had a little setback. Friday night we gradually drove to my parents' house (I stopped a dozen times to take pictures of the amazing clouds resulting from the coming storm). We all ate supper and watched Cast Away. Lindsey began complaining about her stomach, which had bothered her the night before, too. We thought it was nothing, went home, and she went to bed. At about 1:40 A.M. I heard her moan, ran into the room, and she calmly requested to go the hospital. Actually, it was more like this: "DEARGODI'MDIVIDINGINTWOGETMETOERNOW!" Six traffic violations and twelve minutes later we were in the hospital waiting room, watching fourteen hundred Hispanic children climb onto and devour a helpless old man. We were called back within five minutes.

Three and a half hours later, we walked out—Lindsey tipsy on morphine, and me a little more in tune with my femininity after four issues of Women's Day. Did you know there are almost two hundred million different kinds of tampons?

I can't write this blog entry in good conscience without mentioning the mediocre conditions of the Stanly Regional Medical Center emergency room. Did I say mediocre? I meant crappy as crap can crap: clumsy, blind nurses, dirty rooms, and shoddy equipment. Oh, and everything and everyone was s   l   o   w. At one point I walked back to the main area to ask if Lindsey could go pee, and there were at least eight nurses and two doctors just standing there staring at something. I don't think it was an X-Ray unless it was the funniest X-Ray of all time. One more Oh—the intravenous drip literally dripped ALL OVER THE FLOOR. And guess what else? No one noticed the leak until the end, when we pointed it out. "Hey, doctors and nurses whose skills people depend their lives upon, the IV is dripping all over the floor right next to several electrical plugs where anyone could fall and be electrocuted." This hospital should pay us.

Luckily it was just a kidney stone. When Lindsey sees that little word "just" in the previous sentence, she will probably punch me in the groin—it was extremely painful, I have to admit. When the nurse left after explaining that the doctor had requested morphine be given, Lindsey looked at me and said, "Isn't that the stuff they gave Giovanni Ribisi right before he died the most horrible death ever?" We proceeded to quote Brian Regan for several minutes. "Say eight!"

We made it out by 5:45, grabbed some Bojangles, and slept until one o'clock.

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