Manifesting

When I asked if I could bring anything this morning, a friend in the hospital requested a cold brew with Lactaid. She admitted it was a long shot, but I happened to have a jug of cold brew on hand and the Lactaid was not hard to come by. As I pulled into the hospital parking lot, though, she texted that she was NPO, meaning no food or drinks. I left the coffee in the car and headed up to see what was going on. 

She had been hit by a car on Friday night, and the CT scans had revealed a skull hematoma and a fractured tibia. "I guess they're going to do surgery on my leg?" she said, "but I haven't talked to ortho. I'm starving though, and I really want my coffee!"

"Hospitals have their own time zones," I told her, remembering the time I spent with my mom when she was an inpatient. "It would be nice if they were more like bus stops, though, wouldn't it?" I laughed. "Where you can look at your phone and track your ride while you wait."

Just then, the nurse came in for the first check-in of her shift. "Ask me anything," she offered, as if she had overheard our conversation. She swiped into the monitor by the bed and scanned the chart. She listened and answered every question we had, reading the chart and sending messages as she went. Before she left, she discovered that the NPO was an earlier order that had been mistakenly re-released. 

"Order those pancakes," she told my friend, and turning to me, said, "Go get that coffee from the car!"