No Bones About It
I have my regimented patterns. We all know this by now. One part of my pattern is my Thursday night appointment with Bones. This is a television show I watch every week, faithfully. I can’t help it; I’m smitten by the science, the interpersonal relationships of the cast and, sigh, David Boreanaz. I fell in crush with him when I first saw him on Buffy and subsequently Angel. He’s my hero!
Anyway, we had an adventure here, last week. Wednesday, at work, Mr. Fixer was doing something to a car and the car spit in his face, not wanting to be repaired or some such nonsense. This is not the first time a car has talked back, so he largely ignored it. Wednesday night, during conversation before bed, I noticed a semi-large spot of what looked like grease on the right edge of his left eye. I mentioned it. He told me about the rebellious car. We went to sleep.
Thursday, I met my wonderful hubby for lunch and noticed that his left eye was a bit red. He said that one of his co-workers had done a little “surgery” and with a Q-tip was able to get out most of whatever that grease spot was. It seems the remaining detritus might have been embedded. Therefore, Mr. Fixer said that after he’d gotten a couple more cars out, he would probably need a ride to the doctor to have his eye looked at.
At about 20 after 4, I returned to take him to the doctor. I was concerned for the welfare of his eye, but I was also concerned about the fuel in my tank.
You see, typically, I get about 240 miles to the tank and when I fill up, I’m, on average, at 17 gallons. This means that there’s about a three-gallon reserve when my car says it’s absolutely empty and can’t go any further. Unless we’re doing straight high-way driving, I pull over and get fuel once my odometer reaches 240.
Well, this time, there’s no reserve in the bank account with which to buy more fuel the day before payday. You see, we had three rent checks go through at the same time. Our landlord isn’t the most diligent when it comes to depositing rent checks her tenants send her. Usually, it’s a matter of giving her the rent check on the 1st and having her actually deposit it on or around the 20th. Well, through life and our landlord’s semi-casual attitude about rent checks, the November rent check was never cashed. The December one was, but the January one wasn’t. And we’re now in February. So, in the intervening months, we’d sort of spent that rent money on foolish things like groceries and gas and other bills.
Come to think of it, this may well be why the husband has been talking about being more disciplined in our spending. Go figure.
When you have a positive bank account balance which is more than normal, you seem to think that’s a pretty good thing and you tend to get a bit lax in your diligence. When your landlord suddenly deposits all three checks and you get two overdraft charges for the second and third rent checks, you wind up with a negative balance.
Oops.
So, when your husband has an issue with his eye which requires transportation to the doctor, and your odometer is poised and ready to pounce upon 240 and you don’t have any money in the bank and you get told by the doctor that they can’t help you so you have to go to a different doctor, you certainly hope that you have another three gallons of gas to make up for all the running around you’re going to have to do in order to get your husband’s eye looked at and treated properly.
SO… we went to the second doctor, an ophthalmologist, and had Mr. Fixer’s eye examined by a professional eye doctor. The professional eye doctor said that whatever had been in his eye, it was gone now, had been metal because it left behind rust. Rust, in the eye, doesn’t heal. It just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. This requires that the doctor try to remove the rust with a Q-tip. When that doesn’t work, the doctor has to get out the surgical supplies.
These surgical supplies consist of a gauze pad, a spring-like tool to keep your eyelid open, a small, cylindrical object about the size of a small, hand-held flash light, and a strange, surgical-grade metal thing. Turns out this strange, surgical-grade metal thing is a drill bit. Turns out this strange, small, hand-held flashlight thing is a surgical-grade drill. Seems one puts the keep-your-eye-open-so-that-you-look-like-the-Terminator thing against your eye to hold your eyelid open. Then one places the small, surgical-grade drill bit into the small, surgical-grade drill. Then one takes said drill and bit and “brushes” the rust out of your eye.
EEEEWWWWW
Then, when the half-hour procedure is finally over (“Not quite… almost… okay, now it’s done.”), and the doctor tells you that while the eye is still anesthetized now it will probably start to hurt before the night is through, and he offers to write you a prescription for a heavy-duty, narcotic pain killer, it actually takes your wife nodding her head off to get you to accept such a prescription! I don’t care if the doctor thought I was a druggie who wanted a fix, I know from pain! And pain in the eye? Nasty, nasty, nasty bad stuff.
After the eye surgery thing, we dare to go to the pharmacy so that he can actually get the ‘scrip filled. All right, the car is still running. This is a good thing.
We get to the pharmacy at 6pm. The pharmacy says it will be about 45 minutes before the ‘scrip is ready. That leaves 15 minutes to get back home (assuming the car will run on fumes) which is just enough time for me to throw the left-overs in the microwave so that Mr. Fixer can have dinner after his traumatic evening as I sit down in front of the TV for my weekly date with Brennan and Booth.
As it turned out, the pharmacy put the wrong date on the paperwork so after the 45 minute wait, when the tired and now-in-pain Mr. Fixer tried to pick up the pills, the pharmacist said that the insurance company wouldn’t pay for them because it was a four-years-out-of-date claim. After correcting the pharmacist and waiting another 45 minutes and nearly falling out of his chair in pain and then a final twenty minutes, Mr. Fixer got the pills in his hand, popped the top, swallowed a pill and left the pharmacy. We then drove home. All the way. The car squeezed some extra fuel from somewhere and we made it without having to call AAA to come give us a gallon of gas.
And that, my dear David Boreanaz, is why I missed our date last night.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
Please include Northwest Journal in the subject line of all Email. JD_DSVic at yahoo.com
Copyright © 2010 D. S. Vic
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