Thursday, April 12, 2012

Sightless in Seattle (Part Two)

(Seattle, continued.)

Hubs and I are holding hands, walking down the street, minding our own business, when OUT OF NO WHERE a violent wind gust comes down and whips a freaking evil tree branch smack into my eyeball. THE TREE BRANCH ATTACKED MY EYEBALL! AROUND MY GLASSES! I immediately cover my eye with my hands and start to whimper.

Hubs: Babes, are you okay?
Me: N-n-n-n-noooo. It hurts. It hurts REAL BAD!
Hubs: Let me see. (I uncover my eye and let him look.) Oh S$%#. Oh F$#*! You're bleeding hon. You are bleeding tears of blood!

I try not to panic.

Hubs grabs my free hand (the other hand back to covering my eye) and we walk a short distance to a hotel. He runs in and asks loudly for a taxi. A dapper fellow comes over and says he can help. Hubs explains the situation and says we need an Emergency Room, STAT! Fellow leads us outside (I'm not really seeing most of this, just holding onto Hubster's hand.) Next thing I know, I'm in a black Lincoln Town Car.

I'm trying not to freak out, but all I'm thinking about is going blind, my eyeball bleeding, I'll never be able to drive again. How will I read? I hate you, Seattle. I'm supposed to be sight-seeing dammit and I CANT SEE!

We get to the Emergency Room and they put me into a wheel chair and whisk me down the hallway. That's when the tears and blubbering begin in earnest. I'm literally losing it. I have no idea what I'm saying. (Hubs says it was pretty incoherent but something about: Owwwies, pain, can't see, and am I on Grey's Anatomy?)

A Doctor rushes into the room and wants me to open my eye to put numbing drops into it. I scream in protest. "NOO! I don't WANNNA!!!" They plead for me to open my eye. I think Hubs finally had to force it open. In go the drops. And. They. HURT! Ohmigod now my eye is BURNING! I think they give me a sedative.

Time passes. Eventually, they open up the eyelid and peer into the cornea. They insert a dye. They scan it in a machine. They make me take an eye test. I'm still whimpering. Hubs says I'm brave. They locate the place where it tore the lower inner lid and the scratch on the cornea. And then the kicker... I hear a conversation between my darling husband and the Doctor.

Hubs: How could this have happened?
Doc: Oh, we see this all the time.
Hubs: What?
Doc: Oh yes, very common in Seattle. The wind, ya know.
Hubs: Can't you send out those Hobos to trim the trees or something FOR (BLEEPING BLEEPITY BLEEP) SAKE?!?! What is WRONG with you people?

They dispatch me with two prescriptions and an order to follow up with my Opthamologist. Nothing to be done but cover the eye and wait for it to heal. The Lincoln Town Car picks us back up and deposits us near the hotel at a drug store. We go inside, but the pharmacy is closed for Easter. The lady at the front gives us an address for a 24 hour pharmacy. We walk ten blocks, realise that we've been going in the wrong direction and walk twenty blocks to the address.

No pharmacy. We see (well, he sees... I'm still one-eye blind) a cop walking into a Starbucks. What are the chances a cop would be walking into a Starbucks in Seattle... I ask you? Cop tells us there's a Walgreens on Pike and 3rd. That's 30 blocks away. No cabs are out, cause it's EASTER, so we have to walk there.

By the time we find it, I'm exhausted, my feet hurt, I can't see, my eyeball is throbbing and I hate Seattle even more than I hate Clown Zombies. AND I HATE CLOMBIES!!! We get the prescriptions (one is for pain: drops right into the eyeball) and I want to kiss the Pharmacist. I believe I offered him my first born.

We walk another ten or so blocks to Hotel Max and pass out. Spending the rest of our weekend in the hotel room until we finally left that godforsaken city and caught a flight back to Dallas. And guess what? On the trip home, I didn't have a window in my aisle... AGAIN! Not that it mattered, I wouldn't have been able to look out of it.

And that, my three readers, is why you should be on the lookout for evil trees.



No comments: