Friday Nights in KC

Last Friday I was over at a friend's house when her roommate came out of her room needing to go to the ER. (She is ok now- the suspense of the story is not on her recovered illness. :] ) So I accompanied my friends to the nearest hospital which is just five blocks from our house.

... Now I live on the "other side of the tracks." Although I have never felt unsafe, I acknowledge the ghetto and "activities" that do occur...

We arrived at the ER at Research Hospital around 9:15 pm. They triaged our friend and took her in within an hour of our arrival. That left my friend Hannah and I to entertain ourselves in the lobby. We caught up on life since both of us had been ridiculously busy during the summer. After 2 hours, we started to get tired and bored. We wish we had the ice cream in my freezer and the popcorn in her pantry.

However, at about 11:30pm or so, entertainment arrived. This large group of girls came in, and one of them had a real bloody knee. We never got to see the wound, and we couldn't quite get the story pieced together. Nevertheless, this group was amusing. They talked loud, so our reactions weren't awkward or rude. The injured girl's mom was also there as well as this older guy who we never could figure out his relationship with the group. He was the one who talked the most to Hannah and me. They discussed vaguely how she hurt herself (they were at a club, and she was sitting down is all I got), and they were making fun of her and how she'd cover up the scar. Her mom sarcastically added that she could just get another tattoo.

As that group came in and got settled another young girl showed up. She looked maybe 16, and I thought she was with this larger group. She stayed a little to the side and bent over one of the chairs as she held onto a grocery bag. Hannah and I discovered she was not with the group when the girls started asking why she was here. It turns out that she was having a miscarriage, and then it was announced that she had the approximately 2 month old fetus in the grocery bag. Both Hannah's and my jaws dropped. While that fact grieved us, we were a little more disturbed by the fact that a few of the girls and this crazy guy sitting next to us went to go look at it! We refused the offer, but they still informed us of what it looked like. Fortunately, this young girl was taken care of shortly after her arrival.

Hannah and I thought that was the climax of the evening, but at about 12:15am tensions heightened as a dark car zoomed into the ER driveway braking suddenly. A man and woman jumped out of the car and came running into the lobby. The woman was banging on the windows of the admittance area, and the man was shaking as he held some sort of covering over his bloody arm. Looking back at the entrance, I saw his trail of blood. He was losing a lot... fast. Our little lobby group's immediate thought was he was shot. The mom went into defense mode and took her injured daughter further back into the lobby (basically the section behind where Hannah and I were sitting) and her posse of friends quickly followed. The guy with their group began his own investigations. Just as quickly the security guards came out to check the commotion, and after the nurses saw his red, dripping arm, they opened the door and rushed him in. They didn't let the woman in, but a few minutes later when the doors opened again, Hannah and I saw some pools of blood in the hall.

We began trying to find out what happened. It turned out that he had been cut- not shot. However, as one security guard and nurse began to clean the entranceway, the other security guards and police began to patrol the parking lot and streets. The fear was that whoever started this fight would come to the hospital to finish it. Hannah and I began to plan our escape in case something were to happen. (It wasn't too detailed- we'd hit the floor trying to make some sort of cover with the chairs, but we were in the front of the lobby so we'd have to be quick.) The man with the posse we had recently met loudly said to his group (and over Hannah and I) that if he made this sign (his arms waving above his head with his fingers kind of in the shape of guns) we needed to hit the floor. After this announcement, he went back into the parking lot to join the watch.

Needless to say, Hannah and I were astonished that this was really happening, but then we remembered we were in an ER in a particular part of town on a Friday night after midnight. So it makes sense. And no one came in to finish the guy although we wondered if he was alive the next morning. So at 1:15am, our friend came out with a vague diagnosis and appointments for further tests. We didn't tell her our lobby adventure until the next day knowing that how she felt at the time would not allow her to appreciate it fully. When we did tell her, she was a bit jealous because she had been really bored alone where she laid.

Not my regular Friday night plan, but I am sure that is how it is at the hospital on a Friday night in KC.