Paging Dr. ANYONE

And now, for your reading pleasure, a list of things about Kern Medical Center’s emergency waiting room that bothered me last night:

* The elderly bum who sat across from me who was mumbling and laughing to himself in the most disturbing way imaginable.

* The not-as-elderly bum who sat in a giant puddle of coffee next to me, apologized, left, came back and sat in the same puddle, and apologized again as if the puddle of coffee belonged to me.

* The fact that I’m not being facetious by calling the last two people bums. They were, in fact, homeless people hanging out in the emergency waiting room.

* That the internal temperature of the waiting room felt like 106 degrees with 92% humidity.

* The sheer number of screaming children who appeared to belong to no one.

* The sheer number of said screaming children crawling around on the very, very, very off-white floor and subsequently sticking their fingers in their mouths.

* The fact that not one single person was called into the emergency room during the hour and a half I was there.

* The combined smell of cheese and mildew that permeated the room.

* The guy singing country lyrics to his girlfriend without the slightest hint of irony.

* That I can't help but refer to the hospital as "KFC."

* That my son could have been dying and the inattentive nursing staff wouldn’t have given a crap.

* The mere fact that I was stuck there and not at some other, much nicer and more helpful, hospital.