Last night I took Namine to Urgent Care. She’s a little sick (again slash still), but doing okay. Here are some anecdotes from the evening.
On the way
When I started the car, the radio volume was at about 10. Namine asked me to turn down the volume to 7 (she was very specific).
Before I started driving, I enabled Bluetooth on my phone and picked my latest favorite, Nightwish’s newest album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. As the orchestra and power metal started cranking up. Namine said to me, “Daddy, turn it up to 14!”
Checking in
The Urgent Care added something new: a check-in iPad. Apparently all you have to do right now is enter the patient’s name, but that was bad enough.
Namine’s name is unique (she is named after a video game character, after all, her name itself the joining of Japanese and French), and the iPad kept trying to be helpful. No, iPad, her name is not “Nadine.” No, her name is not “Naming.” Sigh. (I did eventually get it to accept her actual name.)
When they forgot all about us
There was only one other family in the waiting room, so it didn’t take long for them to take her back to a room. But once we got there, we were there a long time.
While we were waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for Namine to be seen, she had to go to the bathroom. So I helped her back into her wheelchair, and we walked out to find a bathroom.
As we walked out of the room, all the nurses gathered around the desk chorused, “Bye guys!”
I glared at them. I didn’t mean to, but the lunacy of it irked me more than a little bit. “We haven’t been seen yet,” I said, not slowing down. “She just has to use the restroom.”
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