The countdown.

So, I mentally prepared myself.  Unlike jail, the hospital lets you keep your watch.  I have a plastic Timex (like sunglasses, I go cheap, because I seem to misplace these items) which has a light and a stopwatch. I checked the time - it was 2 PM.  I figure I had been there about an hour and a half.  I felt OK, but the nervousness was amplified.  The fear of the known.  I reset the stopwatch and told myself that I could stick it out for an hour at a time.  I pressed the start button and watched the little numbers start to move.  This was not going to be fun, I was sure of that.

After what seemed like ten minutes, I peered at the watch.  Six minutes had gone by.  This was already starting off poorly; I was going to have to find a way to get my mind off things.  Push-ups!  Might as well start the health kick now.  So, I started doing sets of ten push-ups.  Every six minutes, I decided, I would do ten push-ups.  That would be 100 in a hour and would give me something to do.  So I started this regimen, but there was still too much time in between sets.  Plus, I was losing track of how many sets I had done.  For some strange reason, I wanted to know.  How many would I do?  How could I keep count?  There were some saltine crackers at my bedside.  I decided to break little pieces off of the crackers, and every time I did ten push-ups I would put a piece of cracker in a line.  That way I could keep track. 

The cracker line got longer.  I was hanging on by a thread, trying desperately not to call the nurse.  I decided that when the line got twenty-five cracker pieces long, I would press that button.  I was running out of crackers.  I was breaking the big pieces into little pieces just to keep up.  Twenty-three: 12 minutes to go.  Twenty-four: 6 minutes to go.  Then I waited a whole extra minute to do set number twenty-five, took a moment to catch my breath, and pressed the button.  I had been at Parkland for at least four hours, I figured.  It was almost 5 PM.  I hadn't had a drink in what seemed like forever.  I was in serious pain.  Which doctor was working today?  I was about to find out.