Holy freaking hell!

DW and I spent last night at the local emergency room, and she was admitted to the hospital for most of the day. She's had a mysterious series of tremors, and a false alarm on a CT-scan had us concerned that she might have suffered a stroke recently. However, it turned out not to be, and all of the other neurological testing came out fine.

It was a rough crowd at the ER last night. DW sat next to a guy who had scraped off a significant portion of his face. He had wrapped his pickup around a tree the night before last, and decided to seek treatment only last night. He was a very pleasant fellow, and he helped calm DW just by shooting the shit with her. The guy did make an interesting comment about his home state, saying that the state motto should be "come on vacation; leave on probation." Hmmm.

The highlight of the evening in the ER was the arrival of four Slidell Police officers with a drunken, bloodied-up Russian they had arrested after a bar fight. The Russian guy spoke decent enough English, but he loved to use variations of the word "fuck," and to say them rather loudly. Now, I'll grant that this is not a word unknown to my own vocabulary, but it's not one that I would use when speaking with officers of the law. The Russian was extremely belligerent to everybody in all directions, and he attempted to attack the cops on several occasions. He even spat on one of the officers and broke the cops' Polaroid when they started photographing his injuries. When they shoved him into a corner, a would-be do-gooder came from the next room and shouted that there were citizens watching the police. Those of us standing next to the cops and their prisoner took a different view--if anything, they were too easy on the guy. I've seen beaucoup Texas prison use-of-force videos, and I can safely say that Russian would have been either completely manacled and restrained, or he would have been body-slammed onto the floor instead of merely being pressed into a handy wheelchair, which then tipped over. After about an hour of this, we mostly were ignoring the Russian and encouraging the cops. Tough crowd at Slidell Memorial. They finally took the guy and disappeared into their pre-arranged "quiet room." Shortly thereafter, a police captain apeared and interviewed several people to ensure that his officers complied with the law, which they clearly did. It was actually very entertaining.