4:15 am Vitals (BP, Temp, NYC Subway)

One thing you get used to in the hospital is being woken up at all hours of the night for vitals (blood pressure, temperature, blood oxygen), shots, and getting blood drawn. However, as soon as I saw him, I knew this nurse, scheduled to take my 4:15 am routine vitals, was going to be different. He was 6'3", 180 lbs, African American, around 50 years old, and had huge patches of major wild cats (leopards, tigers etc) sewn all over his scrubs. What a character.

I had "Brave Heart" on the TV, without the sound, and he took one look at the screen and said: "Oh yea, this guy gets pushed out the window"...5 min later - he was right, a guy gets pushed out of the window of a castle. (I never did see the movie so I can't elaborate on the scene; the TV was just on because I couldn't sleep.)

This started a conversation about evil and the NY subway, which went something like this:

"I was ex military so I always give people a once over and carry three things with me when I ride the subway: a flashlight, bottle of water, and pocket knife. There are a lot of tunnels down there and you don't know who you are sitting next to if the lights go out. I'll tell you though that if I saw that Rasputin joker get on the train I'd know something was up with that cat. He was supposed to be really tall and I've seen pictures...he looks like evil.

There are some scary, evil people in this world...(we talked about serial killers)...I was just reading about the Spanish Inquisition. Man, I can't understand them- they went after women who were free thinkers (he points to me....glad he can spot a woman-free-thinker when he sees one) and created a pool of malevolence which is where a lot of these other crazy people come from.

Like one time there was a guy lying on the floor of the subway car with a rooster on his chest and I said 'man are you serious with this chicken' but he just kept on lying there and put on a hat and sat in a chair when we got to the station. Other foreign police wouldn't let you lie in the middle of a subway car with a chicken; nope, they'd beat the breaks off you."

Indeed they would. I think.



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