LOVE IN THE ER

 LOVE IN THE ER

It had been busy for the last few days: rocking the house playing art hard ball while performing as Bob D at the WEIDEROS IN THE WOODS FESTIVAL; teaching an intense and interactive laugh cry Chakra workshop at Alanna Medlock’s shop; singing deeply along with participants at the VARGA festival in collaboration with my incredible art-husband Paul McMahon; spending art-sister time with Kathy Brew; and attending a two and a half hour zoom for a PhD candidate-to-be!!! HELLO!!! Enough!!!! Go lay down Linda. Take an Epsom salts bath? Find some water to drink or at least sit by the local pond for a half hour? Go and nature bathe someplace? Lay in your lounge chair in the backyard WITHOUT YOUR PHONE???? All of the above? Having not done any of these natural cures soon enough, I began hyperventilating on two different occasions.  Ohhhhh noooo!  CANT BREATHE. CANT WALK, CHEST COMPRESSED!!  Surprised that I made my dire self-prediction public because self-disclosure was not my forte, I succumbed and mentioned to the morning prayer group that I had a medical concern and they prayed a special prayer for me after the Rosary that we see as a kind of bonus desert and miracle call of HELPPPPPP!!!!!  It worked because it gave me the inner good mother juice that it took to make the next medical move so that I could trace the cause of my belief that I was imminently and immediately DYING!
Sure that I wouldn’t succumb on my way to the local Emergent Care, they did the listening to my heart and EKG necessities and then suggested that the EKG looked sketchy and that I “ needed to go to the ER. Do you want an ambulance or will you drive.” Ohhhh no, not good.
Calling, texting, contacting astrally my always wise and helpful Internal Medicine/Pediatrician niece in Alaska, she suggested the ER, because I needed more that Emergent Care could offer!
DANG, get thee to an ER , LINDA. Driving with super power mindfulness and Tibetan Monks cd-ing chants of I hoped healing, I got myself to the HOSPITAL WHERE I WAS BORN almost 84 years ago,  the hospital where Dad died in 2005, the hospital where Mom( rather not say),  and I wondered when I pulled up to a too small parking lot where I had to jockey for a spot, yes,I wondered: LINDA-BORN HERE RIGHT? NOW DIE HERE TODAY? OYYYYYY. All of this was a script running through my grey and addled elderhead.
But the scene was somewhat hopeful……new facility, clean, lots of ambulances hanging around, a pleasant millennial at intake which was easy because AI knows me already….. “ name?  Date of birth?” And AI did the rest!!!! Hmmmmmm.
Still hopeful, I was quickly ushered into one of the  intake rooms where 3 more millennials did things so efficiently, quickly and actually without rancor or without giving clues that they did not want a senior citizen small talk experience, that I was sure that I could live or even die happily in their care and medicalized arms. The menu was: test oxygen, put in port for a med if needed( I didn’t need one), a quick and efficient EKG( my second that day), providing a urine sample, chest x-ray or was it a heart x-ray? Have to check with my Doctor niece to see if that was for: chest? Heart? Was that all? I don’t think they took a blood sample or did they? Hmmmm.
All of that pristine medical ATTENTION actually felt like an approximated healing and after their initial hands on induction into EMERGENCY ROOMLAND, I was led into the WAITING WAITING YES I SAID  WAITING ROOM with many other not so sick or not bleeding or not shot( there were lots of police there in rooms that had curtains and patients with unknown stories). I was in the WAITING ROOM and being initiated into my first ER EXPERIENCE OF WAITING having never been in an ER hospital before except for being born there,at that same hospital more than 80 years ago and I returned there at 7 years old was because I threw up maybe alot on my parents pretty and new wallpaper next to the stairs(I considered that a good hiding place for vomit!!!!) Why? Because I couldn’t tell them that school was scary. So off to THAT SAME HOSPITAL ( then a tiny building) that I was admitted to in 1948 and  after I "got better" I came home, and admitted that I didn’t like school because the kids walked on my coat in the cloakroom.( This is part 1 of a more complicated version.)
Back to my ER initiation of waiting and watching dozens of very athletic and very young medical-millennials literally running from room to room from person to concerned partners asking tons of questions:  the ADVOCATES. All of this seemed choreographed and play-like as in theatrical and staged and as if a movie until hour 3 rolled around and a much too young female doctor came out into the waiting room and conferred with me, asked body questions in front of my new WAITING ROOM FAMILY and at that point I didn’t even care because we were all sick, all going to die, all go down together and what if they overheard me telling the beautiful young doctor IN PUBLIC AND IN EARSHOT that I couldn’t breathe or walk twice in the last 6 days but it only lasted a short time, and what if she interviewed me about this and that and they all heard!  SO WHAT!!!  We are public property in the ER WAITING ROOM and my other “ family members” were equally exposed to their private medical life being made public. Some were given meds, some were given bags of liquids on poles, some took antibiotics publicly and we all knew the names of their meds, some were given blankets because they were sooooooo cold.  We saw it all, knew it all, registered the face of the daughter in her 60s who was embarrassed by her compromised senior mother who was truly happy to be in a public scene away from her TV and so she chatted with ALL of us as if this was a cocktail party but everybody there was sullen or limping or better yet: DYING and not truly interested in her optimism.
At least that was my stance: you are here for the first time. Learn how to wait your turn. They are overwhelmed here and there are more than three officers with guns lurching around and going into different curtained rooms. Linda, stop from being so rude and running up to the front desk asking when Millennial Doctor would return. Stop acting privileged. Learn some ER WAITING LONG MANNERS. And truly stop trying to guess why the 6 year old girl child smashed her thumb, stop judging the 500 pound man in the too small wheelchair with swollen and bandaged legs bigger than your favorite tree in the yard, stop isolating. MAKE AN ER FRIEND my third eye said and then it happened. I found love in the Local ER. I really don’t think she was real. I think she was an alien ANGEL. No one can be that incredibly insightful and wise. No one can crack my shell of judgment and isolation and mistrust that easily and yet she did. At 21, having had an extremely serious medical condition at 10 years old( can’t tell for anonymity reasons) she was here  because we were both concerned about our hearts and yet her MAGICAL stance, her attitude, her projected HOPE THAT LIFE WAS GOOD, her positive conversation and words  about her family and her partner ( in waiting room with her best friend) was a testament to what? Her? Youth? We both thought we were dying and given her description of her pain, and given my paranoia, we both were!!! And yet she was literally doing her now or future meeting with Saint Francis’s LADY DEATH  with such dignity, such miracle making conversation about her study of music in college, such talk of how she met her partner, such wisdom, such heart, such pure sharing that I thanked my stars, thanked my body, thanked age for sending me to the ER TO FIND LOVE.  Believe me I’ve been around the Guru block, finding teachers all over the world and truly this young AI/ ANGEL plant sent by my Guardian Angel , this wisdom carrier knocked on the door of my ailing heart. She knocked so perfectly that when another discharge millennial came toward me a half hour after the miracle child and I found each other with “you can go home now papers,” I honestly did not want to leave the 4 hour ER endurance that ended with my having met LOVE!!!🌸
Linda Mary Montano        9/2025
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