well-dressed foolish ideas

"She's not where you told us to try calling. What would you like us to do?" Her bright big green eyes peered over her reading glasses that perched on the end of her nose. I imagined a hairy wart there as I scrunched up my face in disbelief. Thin fingers resting on a pointy hip bone, the nurse, dressed in a medicinally blue nurse's outfit, looked unconcerned. She handed me a wad of gauze and made herself busy by at the cubby-holed wall of shelves until I answered nervously, "No, she must be there. It's Tuesday. Can you just try again?"

"Sweetie, why don't we just go back home and wait for her there?" Comforting though the voice was, she wasn't my mother. And for a girl in an emergency room with a wartime's supply worth of kitchen towels wrapped around her arm soaking up her blood, this just wouldn't do. "Why don't you just go back home and wait for her there? I've got this gash across my arm here, and I think I'd rather be somewhere where they can bring me back to life once I've bled out every drop of blood, if that's okay with you." which is what I would have said if "Okay." hadn't come out first.

I fumbled with the wad of gauze that the pastel coated nurse handed me, until finally I just gave up and handed it back to her on the way out of the emergency room, content with the kitchen towels already wrapped around my arm. "Thanks for trying."