Our waitress returned with Jan’s beer, but no Sling. Turning to me she asked: “Is a Sling the same thing as a Singapore Sling?”
“Yes, it is.”
She pulled one of those red bartender drink-mixing books out of her hip pocket, rifled through it and said, “According to this, Singapore Slings are usually made with two ounces of lemon juice.” I nodded sagely. “My book also mentions an alternative recipe that calls for two ounces of lime juice instead of lemon juice,” she continued. “Which would you prefer?”
“Lemon juice, please,” I replied.
She skittered off.
Before long she was back with two tall, yellow drinks on her tray. Neither looked even remotely like any Sling I had ever seen before.
“I made one with lemon juice and the other with lime juice,” she beamed. “Check and see which you like best.”
I took a sip from the first one. It was incredibly sour.
“I don’t think you added enough grenadine,” I theorized.
“Grenadine? Darn it! Are these things supposed to have grenadine in them?” She consulted her little red bible. “You’re right; they are supposed to have grenadine! Hang on, I’ll be right back!”
She zipped away.
Seconds later she returned with a bottle of grenadine.
“Okay,” said our teenybopper waitress. “I’ll pour, and you tell me when to quit.”
I glanced at Jan. She grinned and took a swig of her Blue Light.
“Go for it,” I said.
After a couple of glubs I held up my hand and she stopped pouring. We all stared at the one-inch layer of grenadine congealing at the bottom of the glass. My drink was beginning to look like a science experiment gone bad. Our waitress picked up my soup spoon and used it to stir the dubious concoction.
“How does it taste now?” she asked eagerly.
I took a sip. Yecch!
“Wonderful!” I said. “Thank you very much.”
She heaved a sigh of relief, gathered up her stuff and left.
“Our special this evening is liver and onions.”
Liver and onions? Yecch!
“Do you have any fish dishes?” I asked.
“We have some really awesome pickerel, sir.”
“Is it bony?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a try, then.”
Jan deliberated for a minute before selecting Weiner schnitzel and noodles with a side order of fresh vegetables. As we waited for our food, she drained the last of her Blue Light. I stirred my vile Sling morosely.
Our food arrived. Jan was disappointed to find her “fresh vegetables” were in fact canned peas. To add insult to injury, when she began eating she discovered the noodles tasted like those lumps that used to form in Cream of Wheat.
“I didn’t mind the lumps in Cream of Wheat, but they’re not supposed to masquerade as German noodles!” she complained. I snickered. Revenge is so sweet.
“Should have ordered the pickerel,” I said smugly. “Brain food, you know.”
I cut off a piece and bit into it.
“Ack!”
“What’s wrong?” asked Jan.
“Bones!” I gasped. A dense cluster of bones trying its damnedest to assassinate me, to be precise. I gingerly extracted the razor-like spicules one by one. Subsequent mouthfuls weren’t any better. After several attempts I gave up and turned my attention to the accompanying rice and broccoli. Both were insipid.
At the end of the meal, our food was virtually untouched. When our waitress returned she looked worried.
“Was everything okay?” she asked.
“Splendid. Do you have any decaf?”
“All we have is Sanka,” she said.
The only thing worse than no coffee is Sanka. I’d sooner drink bilge water.
“Um, maybe we’ll just take the check now,” I replied.
We left her a big tip. I’m guessing she used it to purchase the new Backstreet Boys album. Or perhaps a couple of tubes of Clearasil. Small town living. There’s no life like it!
“ I swear, he wasn’t breathing!”
The other day I was working in the ER when suddenly the overhead PA system crackled to life: “Code Blue in the Special Care Unit, Code Blue!”
I abandoned my patient in mid-sentence and belted out of the department. As I passed the operating room I was joined by both our surgeon and our anaesthetist.
At the entrance to unit 4 we nearly collided with four ambulance attendants on their way to assist at the code. The seven of us thundered down the hall like a herd of stampeding rhinos.
We came crashing into the room only to find that two other doctors, a medical student, a respiratory therapist and at least half a dozen nurses had already beaten us to the punch. It was standing room only.
I wormed my way to the bedside to see how the resuscitation was progressing. To my surprise, the patient was sitting bolt upright in his bed. His eyes were as wide as saucers. He was looking fearfully at the medical student, who happened to be brandishing the defibrillator paddles. There was a nursing student with Ferrari-red cheeks at the foot of the bed.
“I swear, he wasn’t breathing!” she was telling anyone who’d listen. After a fair bit of grumbling the mob slowly began to disperse.
As we left the room I heard the anaesthetist mutter, “Code Blue? More like a Code Blue Light!”
Rollover Rob (The Adamantium Man)
Last Wednesday night the ER was flat-out ridiculous. Think TARFU. No, scratch that. More like DEFCON 1. I didn’t get home until well after two in the morning. I shed my clothing and fell asleep within seconds. Five minutes later the phone rang. It’s uncanny how often that happens.
“A-roo?” I groaned into the receiver. Wait a minute, that’s not English. “Hello?”
“Hi Dr. Gray. Sorry to wake you, but I’ve got an intoxicated 24-year-old man who was just in a rollover. He has a swollen left elbow, some contusions and several superficial lacerations.”
“Coupla minutes.”
As I fumbled around in the dark in search of my discarded scrubs I recited my well-worn motivational mantra: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job… .
When I got to the hospital I hung up my jacket and went to the ER. I must have looked even more pathetic than usual because the nurse supervisor apologized again for waking me up.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Where is he?”
She pointed to room F.
A tattoo-laden critter in a Kid Rock T-shirt, muddy black jeans and roach-killer cowboy boots was sprawled on the stretcher. He stank of booze. When he saw me he grinned widely and yelled, “HEY, BUDDY!”
“I’m not your buddy,” I growled. He looked surprised. I guess back on his home planet everyone’s cheerful at 2:45 a.m. “What’s your name?”
“Rob.”
“Okay Rob, take off everything except your underwear.”
Just then a teenage girl wearing more makeup than your average circus clown barged in and addressed my new patient.
“Hey, baby, your lighter’s not working,” she said. “Got any matches?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Rob’s girlfriend.”
“Were you in the accident?”
“Nope.”
I jerked my thumb towards the door.
“Out.”
Bozette hightailed it out of the room. While I shut the door, Rob stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms.
As I examined him I got more of a history. The saga went something like this: Rob and his merry band of cretins had been drinking heavily all night. Sometime around 1:30 he managed to convince his sidekicks Little Klutz and Friar Schmuck to drive him to a neighbouring town so he could look up his ex-girlfriend and three-month-old son. They were doing an estimated 150 kilometres per hour when their car parted company with the highway. Not surprisingly he didn’t recollect too much about the crash itself, but he did remember kicking out the remnants of the rear windshield and crawling away from the smouldering wreckage. In order to avoid the police with all their pesky questions and breathalyzers, the gormless trio fled the scene. When Rob got back to his apartment his current girlfriend took one look at him and dragged him to the ER to get checked out.