Chapter6
"Please, listen to me! I don't have any health insurance. I lost my job about four months ago and didn't bother to enroll in COBRA. Don't take me to the hospital, I can't afford it!"
Mac pleaded his case to the attendants on duty; what time of day, or what day it was, was unknown to him. The one thing he was sure of was the familiar surroundings. The drab interior of his drunk tank was a memory only four months old.
"Your blood pressure is much too high. It is this agency's policy to take any individual transported here by the police to the hospital when the individual's vital signs warrant it, and your blood pressure warrants it. Now please, let us do our job. Honestly, your health and well-being is our greatest concern. Trust me, you need a physician to examine you. Your heart rate is 130 and blood pressure 140 over 95! This could be serious!"
Persuaded by the attendant's warnings Mac conceding the argument and was transported to the St. Anthony Hospital emergency room for observation. On a wall within the spacious emergency room a clock read 9:30 and the darkness outside obviously indicated it being night. Curious to discover the remaining piece of the puzzle, a nurse informed him it was Saturday. Saturday! What the hell happened to Friday! The last thing Mac remembered was it being Thanksgiving, sometime, and a pissed off looking cop telling him he wasn't supposed to be drinking alcohol. Then boom! The lights went out. Mac figured the "not supposed to be drinking alcohol" must have been some tidbit that didn't register when either the judge or the alcohol counselor, or both, mentioned it. It was his understanding that the alcohol consumption was to cease when the Antabuse administration began, which was at that time two weeks in the future. It turned out to be a personally manufactured understanding.
After answering a battery of questions and three hours of intermittent emergency room physicians' monitoring, he was deemed healthy and safe enough to be discharged and was taken back to the Arapaho House.
The Thanksgiving holiday weekend confirmed there was not a booze shortage. Arapaho House was occupied to overcapacity as Mac estimated he shared the dingy confines with roughly thirty fellow drunks, most blotto. He laid there listening to the incessant snoring and flatulent cacophony and did his best to stomach the latest mephitic effluvium invading his nostrils.
One father and son duo brightened the stay with a somewhat entertaining and educational scene. Mac noticed a kid, looking eighteen years old, or so, disheveled hair, hung over as hell, sitting on his cot, head in hands, obviously deep in confused turmoil. Unbeknownst to Mac, this kid's dad, occupying an adjacent cot, came to consciousness. Completely lost at sea, investigating his newly found and foggy environs through bewildered, slit eyes, dad finally notices son, and asks him, "Dude, where the fuck are we?"
Son: "We're at a drunk tank dad. You totaled the car last night, dude. You lost it on a curve going too fast man."
Pissed off dad: "What the fuck you talkin about dude? You tellin me my fully restored '68 GTO is totaled?"
Son: "No, I aint shittin ya, man, it's totaled, dude, gone!"
Bewailing dad: "No! No! No! Not my baby! Fuckin son of a bitch, dude!" A few moments following dad's most grievous car loss emoting he said to son, "Dude, when the cops show up make sure you tell them you were drivin, remember I lost my license, man."
Not so dutiful son: "Dude I just told you that you were drivin too fast going around the curve. I wasn't even in your car dude! I was followin ya in my car. Cops showed up just a couple a minutes after I pulled over, they got me on my own DUI dude! Dude, how do ya think we got here? The cops brought us here dude, they already know everything!"
Beaten dad: "Ah fuck man! Your old lady is gonna kill me dude!"
The comical scene these two performed also quickly taught Mac that it was not his future being witnessed but his present with coarser, cruder