The Accidental Tourists

I absolutely hate going downtown to the medical center. The traffic. The Construction. And even though my niece is a beautiful healthy teenager today, I can't help shiver from the haunting memories of her cancer. But when a friend asks you to go to see a mutual friend, you suck it up and go. I told myself to think of it as an adventure. Dullness is so underrated.

We get to the medical center and I laugh hysterically at our monorail system. It cost 50 billion dollars and goes 2.3 miles. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little but not a hell of a lot. Every time I pass it, I think I'll probably win the loto before I ever ride this.

We drive pass the hospital and its parking lot is full. I don't know what we were thinking but we decided to pick another parking lot, any one.  Somehow we ended up in China. Robyn's pushing me in my wheelchair. I'm carrying two vases. Roses up my nose and a leaking vase so I look like I just couldn't wait. She's laughing so hard that she doesn't remember to look for curb cuts.

Somehow we emerge from a side street a mile from the hospital. We decided to hop on the rail. Nicholas has been fascinated by trains so I always thought I'd take him for a ride, like next time we were at the zoo. As nice as it was, I didn't see planning a Saturday around this.

The ride changed our luck, or so it seemed. Found the hospital, found the friend, had a nice but short visit. That's what happens when you involuntarily tour the medical center, street by street. Still we were amused by our actions and after the visit were thrilled with ourselves when we found the correct parking lot. Hey small minds, grand accomplishments.

Robyn pays for the parking at one of those automatic tellers. Pushes me into the elevator, and then hops off for no apparent reason. A normal person would quickly press the open door button on the elevator and yell "What the hell are ya doing?"

I have cerebral palsy. Ignoring my friends, I think I have pretty normal thoughts and with a 5 to ten second lag, my body usually response to my commands. So I'm in the elevator praying that when my finger gets around to it, it will push the right button, not say like the alarm. It was definitely a toss up. Luckily the elevator was slow and it was before rush hour, or I may still be stuck alone on the 8th floor.

I find her, in silence she waves the receipt as if to say, see say thank you, without the receipt we couldn't get out of here.

"Shut up, just Shut up." She says five minutes later as I grinned trying not to laugh. Robyn's a martial arts instructor so I should have because she could kill me with two fingers. We didn't need the receipt, we needed the other thing the machine spit out. Another 10 minutes gone waiting for the parking attendant.

Other people might have deemed this trip as disastrous. We were thoroughly amused with our many minor calamities. And we accomplished our objective, visiting Master A. So all's well that ends well.

We do wish Master A a speedy recovery because quite frankly I'm scared to go downtown again.