I told you I was sick

There is an old church graveyard in England where a parishioner’s ancient tombstone has only one sentence on it:  “I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.”

As detailed elsewhere, last Sunday Marilyn fell onto her nightstand -- hitting the back of her head. I went up to comfort her and sit with her awhile. She wanted to go to the ER, but I figured she was overreacting, as usual. So I sat with her for an hour and asked her questions to see if her mental facilities were functioning normally, like the doctors do in the movies. I held my finger in front of her eyes and told her to follow it back and forth, which she did. Then held up three fingers and asked her how many fingers I was holding up. She said three. My medical diagnosis complete, I got her an ice pack and a glass of chocolate milk, made her comfortable on her couch, chatted with her awhile, turned on the TV for her, and left. My good deed for the day.

Yesterday, after lunch with the Skipper, Marilyn was over to my place for a bit, then went up to her place. I figured she’d be down for dinner, but never came. I went to bed around 10, thinking ‘that crazy woman is probably passed out on her bed.’ She had just started a new pain medication and had already taken 2 pills in a row while she was at my place.

This morning she texted me that she had broken her neck, and would I go buy her some Ding Dongs?

When I went up to her place, with the Ding Dongs, at 8:30. she had on a neck brace. Her purse had just been stolen while she was doing laundry (but had been found abandoned in the elevator -- the thief had only taken her cash, nothing else) and was folding laundry on her couch, with a carefree grin on her face.

Turns out that last night, while I was wallowing in lethargy and Netflix, the pain in her neck got so bad she called a neighbor who has a car to take her into the ER. And there the doctors found a hairline fracture on her neck, from the fall she took last Sunday. They gave her a morphine drip and kept her for observation for several hours, then sent her home with, in her words, “the best (expletive deleted) pain pills I’ve ever ever EVER had!”

In all the ruckus she had forgotten to text me that she’d gone to the ER. So I treated her texts this morning as typical Marilyn pill-fueled bombast.

And it turns out I was wrong. Dead wrong. The poor woman may be medicated out of her mind sometimes, but she had experienced a real medical trauma which I had cavalierly ignored, smoothed over, and then made fun of.

I’m not feeling very good about myself right now . . .