12/14/04
My friends are all having a baby boom right now - eight of us in one year. Already Matt McM. and Carrie had a boy named Cogan, Lindsay and Dana had Jack, our producer Penny had Finn three days ago, and yesterday, Tessa's best friend Jason and his partner Tim said hello to Noah David, born eight pounds and six ounces.
I would, however, like to extend my middle finger to the hospital in Santa Monica where Noah was born, because they only allow one male to visit the baby. Not "one male at a time," one male only EVER. This is either the most homophobic law still on the hospital books, or else they are bizarrely behind the times. And this is California, not some bucktooth health clinic in Montgomery, Alabama. Totally Uncool.
So many lives have been entering our world of late that it was a jarring experience to be caught in the back of an ambulance this evening en route to Hell (aka Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn). During my shift at the Food Co-op (boy, I'm predictable, huh) an elderly Jamaican woman tried to get some yogurt off the top shelf, and the milk crate she was standing on gave way.
She fell, hard, to the floor, catching the freezer door on the back of her head and smashing her back. When the co-op asked for a volunteer to accompany her to the hospital, I thought of a thousand reasons NOT to do it, but then I remembered a rule Tessa and I once had: put yourself in the way of stuff happening. So I hopped on the ambulance, and we sped through some sketchy parts of Brooklyn.
I mean, this woman was almost sixty, had no family, no real friends, zero money, and was strapped to a board with a brace in her mouth. In the ambulance, I looked at the gurneys, the medications buckled to the wall, and wondered how many people had died in this little chamber. And what the hell was this woman going to do?
For three hours, I shadowed her through the two emergency rooms, advocating for her as best I could, getting her the drugs she needed. She wouldn't talk to any of the doctors, and only opened up to me when I told her the story of how I went to Negril, Jamaica and got dysentery. That always gets 'em laughing.
Those New York City emergency rooms, in the dead of winter, with people coming in with gunshot wounds, or being struck in the legs by a speeding car... jesus, the walls close in, and you feel like you can't breathe. It's not that far away from a prison in some faraway land where, like Paul Simon sang, you don't speak the language and hold no currency.
When it became clear that my compatriot was not paralyzed, nor even hurt that badly, I arranged for the Food Co-op to send her a bag full of staples, with special emphasis on the strawberry yogurt she was reaching for when she busted her ass. I mean, if you endured that amount of suffering for strawberry yogurt, you better fucking have some at the end of the day.
I gave her some money to get by, made sure she could get home, and then I went back to my warm apartment, where my preggers wife was waiting with a huge smile. The co-op said that they had to re-imburse me, but fuck it, it's Christmas.
Posted by irw at December 14, 2004 11:59 PMYou are a better yuppie than I, Gunga Din.
Oh: I wonder if that hospital's one-male rule is a reaction to gun fights or brawls that have broken out in the maternity ward?
Does that mean you are kicking Santa Monica out of coastopia?
You're a good man, Ian. Merry Christmas!
Well done sir, well done. Good karma for the holiday/solstice season.
Hospital Update: The rule, which allows only two people to wear the all-access bracelet, exists so that baby's aren't stolen. (In fact, apparently all the little Santa Monica baby's have a sort of lo-jack on their ankles until they are discharged.) The problem is, in the case of adoption there are more than two parents. Anyway, the hospital chilled out and the social worker advocated but no one should have worried because trying perpetrate an injustice against my friend Jason is a waste of valuable time. He is a force and he is right and he is smart and he has WAY more energy than you do. And now, he and Tim are going to be the best Dads a boy could want (along with all the other best Dads-to-be!)
The funny thing about that, Tesse, is that most babies are nicked by women, not men. When our first was born I was told I could not go in the nursery as I had no wrist band and then told men do not get wrist bands ever. I, of course, went into the nursery and said hello to my daughter. You may want to prepare the doctors and nurses for Mr. William's apparent powers of reaction were he to face the same stunned policy. All they need is a valid IDing process ahead of time so that any male can feel less like sperm donor in the process.
Good job in the ER! I'm glad the woman was OK.
That's a surprising thing to read about The People's Republic of Santa Monica.
The world would be a nicer place if more people thought the way you do. Good going.
Y'know, I been thinkin' bout this some more, and bleeding-heart libs are always trying to “help people.” Is that the motto of Coastopia, “help people”? Bleeding heart nonsense is so bleeding and heartful and it conflicts with true American values of getting ahead Darwinistically. Of course this happened in one of them Commie food co-ops. What’s next – co-operating AND helping? They do that Socialist crap in Sweden and none of them can choose their own doctor and their life expectancy is only like 99. See where it gets ya, ya helpful helper types, helping and helping and being helpful and stuff!
Except Arabs, Ms. Red, who can remain under the boots of tyrants for all "liberals" care, because they aren't capable of self-rule.
So, is Amurrica helping Arabs now? What'll they think of next?!?
Tessa, we just ran into same situation. Elina had the house arrest anklet. It went off for some reason, in stormed the full complement of nurses and orderlies looking for her.
They tagged me not 5 minutes after her birth, full access pass to the whole floor from our birthing suite to nursery. 36 years of questions about the whole miracle of birth thing: answered in short order!
Ian, kudos on your helping and guiding woman. The milk crate situation probably needs reworking, yeah?
I'm surprised you didn't spell America with three Ks, Annie.
Nursery? I understand the nursery with adoption, but are there hospitals that take a healthy baby out of the birthing room? I don't remember Lillie-Anne ever leaving our room. They did all the scrubbing and vacuuming right in our room. I don't know how I would have reacted to someone taking her away. I guess I would not have had a choice.
That hospital is totally gay.