Mom Realizes Nobody is Talking About Her

My family has been through 3 major hospital stays in 3 years, but last week, for the first time, it didn't involve Mom. I had gone up to the hospital every day for lunch, and then after work. By Friday night I was exhausted and decided to just stay home and relax a little. My dad was sort of cranky all week(To be expected when you have your chest cracked open), and didn't really seem to enjoy company anyhow.

Ruthie stopped by when she got home and told me she wanted to go wash her car. A little Ruthie time seemed like a good cure for exhaustion and I soon found myself driving a little white VW Beetle in search of a car wash that was still open. I eventually had to resort to Google maps on my phone. (It's no iPhone, but it gets the job done)

As we arrived at the self car wash my phone rang.
"Bueno! ¿Quien es?" I attempted Spanish.
"I'm at the hospital, Mom fell" my sister answered back.
"Fell?"
"Her knee is pretty messed up."
"Messed up bruised? Messed up torn ligaments/surgery?"
"She's in the ER now, they're going to X-Ray it"

My sister has a flare for over dramatizing things that I blame on years of watching Days of Our Lives(Why can't Bo and Hope just be happy?), but on the off chance that it was serious, I figured I should be there.

I quickly finished showing Ruthie the difference between the foaming brush and the high pressure rinse(Sexual joke left as an exercise to the reader). I'm going to go ahead and leave the "Cute Jewish Girl from a well-to-do family has no idea how to work a self service car wash" joke alone too. That one's a fish in a barrel and I'm holding a 12 gauge. I will say however, that she seemed surprised that it took dollar bills, of which she had... one. Maybe the joke is actually one about me being a poor kid and well versed in the workings of said car wash.

At any rate, despite our obvious cultural differences, we had a good time and then rushed home. I could go in to more detail, but I think we've all grown tired of my long winded "I love Ruthie" stories. I dropped her off and after a long drive found myself once again in the hospital.

I decided to first find my mom which wasn't a hard task since she was the belligerent angry lady in the ER. Apparently she had been getting water for my dad and the hospital's ice machine was leaking water all over the tile. Either she didn't notice, or saw an opportunity for a quick buck, but she took a pretty nasty spill. One thing I think we can all agree upon is that a Cuidado Piso Mojado sign would have helped the situation immensely.

When I found my mother she was bitching up a storm heatedly discussing the fairness of paying her co-pay when the hospital was clearly at fault. She didn't seem to be in too much pain to me, since her main focus was on being angry, and not being hurt. A few hours and an ace bandage later and we finally took her home.

The next day she called me from the shoe store so I'm fairly confident that the attention helped more than the ace bandage.