So Laura and I are joking around, as per the usual, and she said something particularly funny which gave me a bit of a kneejerk reaction.  I wish I could remember the joke but I was busy putting my right foot down onto air.

The fences around Brooklyn are ornate and beautiful.  They’re also hard.  And sharp.  If you happen to be laughing at your friend’s joke and fall onto one of them, it hurts.

Fences and gravity in cahoots against my giggles.

+

=

Now, it just felt like I got the wind knocked out of me, so when Laura yelled “OH MY GOD ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” I laughed and said I was fine.

“No you’re not… you’re bleeding.”

The feeling you get when you look down and see blood spreading through your shirt could probably be best described as “unnerving.”  I applied pressure for a few seconds until I realized that it wasn’t too bad of a wound.  My breathing was fine, heart was intact, and I didn’t have an iron rod through my body.

Holla at a sternum.

So Laura was about to get an ambulance but we decided we’d just cruise instead; no point in spending money for an ambulance and it was such a nice night.

I made her take a picture with me before we set off.  If she looks uncomfortable it’s because she is.

We go to the first hospital that my GPS finds, which is a mile away and was some random Brooklyn hospital.  When we get there we fill out a computer touch screen asking me my name, age, and the problem, which Laura awesomely put “Hole in chest bleeding.”

I was 2nd in line.  Oh well.

Everyone called my doctor “Dr. Spikes” in the acute ward because of his spikey hair.  I thought it was ironic.

Worst.  Hospital.  Ever.  Took them about an hour to even see me once I got the stretcher thing.  Threw a bandage on it and IV’d me up.  The Jamacan nurse was awesome and kept calling me the “luckiest guy alive.”  When I left we hugged; I was her favorite patient of the night.  She was my favorite Jamacan ever (much nicer than experience with one waiting for the Chicago L who made a slicing-your-neck motion).

Dr. Spikes wanted a CAT scan of me, “just to be sure.”  So I drank a shitton of disgusting liquid and then got to wait around another 2 hours while they “prepped” (drank, I assume).

The CAT scan was pretty sweet.  When they put the activator liquid in they said, “You might feel some warmth in your arm and have a metallic taste in your mouth.  That’s normal.”  By no means was that “normal” to me but it certainly is kickass.  They should have continued on though and said, “the warmth will spread throughout your body and eventually hit your pelvic region.  This will make you feel like you just shit and pissed yourself and you’ll have to lay awkwardly for another 2 minutes until you can get up and survey the damage.”

I didn’t shit myself.  Win.

So the scan results were suppost to take “30 minutes.”  I was finally released 2 hours later.  It wasn’t so bad though because Dr. Spikes let me go outside to smoke, which I was a little weirded out about since the CAT scan was supposed to be looking for if I was bleeding into my lungs, but whatever… he’s a doctor.

Laura was hilarious the entire time and God bless her little heart she stayed with me in the hospital throughout the entire 5 hour ordeal.  She didn’t even want to come outside for that initial smoke in the first place.

Snapped when we got back:

And that was my night.  Missed my flight to San Francisco in the morning for my cousin’s wedding.  Suck.

That is all.