I'm Sorry, Sir, but Common Sense Is Not Covered in Your Premium

It began this morning with my son chasing lightwaves through our living room. Just as he had a string of photons inviting his fist to close, though, he misstepped and aimed his forehead at the sharp corner of a cedarwood chest.

Now, the gash wasn't so big that it was streaming blood at the rate a gash would stream the first season of Stranger Things, but it was still very big and the blood was very second season of Stranger Things, in that we only felt the need to watch it a couple of episodes at a time, pressing it down with a paper towel between viewings. Regardless, we took him to '[stream-service] and chill' at the local Instacare.

They generously let us skip the line and go right through to the exam room, right after they confirmed his name, our names, his relationship to us, our phone number, our house address, email addresses, inaugural address, dominant hand, music preferences, and any names or nicknames we might have gone by at previous places of employment. Then we were let right through the door, with Healthcare completely at the ready to close up this small portal to hell that my son and the cedar chest must have long been planning to open in his forehead, and do it before little cedarwood sliver-demons could crawl out and conquer our realm.

If you're in the medical field, though, you know that modern medicine sold its soul to the cedar demons, long ago. Thus, it has indoctrinated in you that, should the situation arise when a toddler comes through with a freshly opened portal, the protocol is to slowly admit him to triage, meticulously hook him up to a machine, then take a few minutes to get him a cotton candy sucker while his 'vitals' accurately report the ETA of world domination. This one nurse must have finished debriefing with the cedar demon lord as she got the sucker, because she quickly took off the bandages and let us into a room, right after she came back. I'm kidding about all that demon stuff, of course. (Or did I.)

In the room, we could sense the urgency of the situation, what with all of the doctors and nurses speeding past our room, escorting people in street clothes wearing surgical masks and walking at a pace that suggested their pants would fall off if they bent their knees. After the fifth nurse passed, her patient following like a hospital assassin who accidentally just drank the wine with the cyanide powder, we started to wonder if we'd been forgotten; even my son's wound was getting bored--I could tell because of how it was staring up at the ceiling and drooling blood with its mouth open.

So, to placate the shrieking little human being, we looked around and found a book for children behind a small rack of magazines. I stood and held it up, turning the pages while my wife told the story. Both of us ignored the words and my wife desperately used the pictures as a guide to make up a story on the spot so my son wouldn't lose interest and start shrieking, again. 

Just when we thought my son's skull might be spending a little too much time outside, the receptionist came back and told us his grandma--who had been aware of the situation from the start--had shown up and asked if we would like her to come back. We told her, "Of course!" but I was confused: it took grandma over twenty minutes to drive to the Instacare, yet we had been admitted for over half an hour, and, unless I had been hallucinating, all of the nurses and doctors were already there. They didn't have to drive to get to us, but were walking back and forth, yet it was taking them longer to take one step to the side and into our room than it had taken a grandma who was twenty minutes away to enter the building.

At this point, I was starting to express frustration to my wife. And, I know that my frustration was heard, because the glass door to our room was partially open, and I saw a nurse turn her head sharply in my direction to scowl at me. So, I stared back at her. I'm not sure what the expression on my face looked like, but I can't imagine it was friendly since I had just thrown the book for children on the Healthcare bed and against the wall.

We welcomed grandma, and after a quick conversation I had with myself, aloud, she and my wife both suggested I go for a walk. So I did. I went for a walk.

Forty-five minutes later, I called from the store to where I had walked, and asked if I needed to get a binky, since, on our way to the car, we forgot to grab one while my son's blood was making room for the sliver-demons to proceed. I was told, 'yes, [I] should get a binky,' because, 'no, no one had come into the room to suture the gash on [my] toddler's forehead.' To be fair, maybe the doctor was putting out too many fires regarding fallen pants and unconscious assassins. I don't know for sure.

After getting back, I was let into the room, and gave the binky to my wife. To my surprise, I was told a nurse had finally peeked her head in before I got there, but had informed mom and grandma of some troubling news: they had no binkies at the Instacare. I couldn't help but beam at the thought of my heroics for calling ahead and bringing the binky. However, I was then told that the nurse only emerged because grandma tracked her down a few minutes before, and asked her if they had any binkies. To her credit, this particular nurse, this pillar of our healthcare system, wasted no time, and must have tirelessly searched all over the floor around her feet before she finally decided to give up hope and bring the news of having no binkies, questioning her training and her faith in the idea of Health. There was still no word about when my son's head would be receiving Healthcare, though.

I went back to the waiting room, and, to pass the time, I started doing some light research--I can't remember exactly what about, but I think I recall seeing articles from law firm websites with terms like 'MRSA', 'negligence', 'malpractice', something like that. Within mere minutes (twelve) I started to hear my son's distinctive cry, like a penguin father in the wild can distinguish his son's cry over all the other voices in the Instacare waiting room. My wife came through the door and sat next to me. She was shaking, and decided to go for a walk, herself, because the doctor paid no attention to my son's gaping portal of crimson in order to lecture her about the importance of yearly shots for children and 'Why wasn't he updated on his shots?' and 'He should get updated on his shots' and 'Amway is still a viable long-term investment.' She only started to stitch my child after my wife pulled out a paper trail that definitively proved we had no connections to Jenny McCarthy or the Illuminati.

My wife came back from her walk, thankfully, and was beckoned by an apparently irate nurse to come see the damage. My son, his mom, and his grandma all came out, and we headed home.

This entire story is told only so I can ask: does common sense violate healthcare policies? I understand the financial and professional risks of treating a human with Healthcare, but can't common sense at least apply to an 18-month old child? Is it against HIPAA to suture up a toddler's gash before doing the other stuff? Does a doctor risk violating the Hypocratice Oath by putting a baby's open wound before liability risks? Are slow people who wear surgical masks truly more at risk of death than a person who could hold an entire horse-pill with the hole in their forehead, like a twisted carny's party trick?

And, most importantly, when are we going to exorcise all of the cedar chests of these freakin' demons?