What do you mean?
"What do you mean she put her finger in a pencil sharpener?" Dr. Khalid Mohammad asked while bending over to examine a bloody rag wrapped around the pinkie of Bridezilla.
"It's for sharpening eye pencils," Bridezilla said with a reproving glance at her erstwhile boyfriend. "I needed to clean out the fawn brown so I could use the raisin quartz. Nothing else fits in there except my pinkie!"
"You should have used a Q-Tip," her erstwhile boyfriend said for the tenth time since he had picked her up and driven her across the bridge to George Washington University Hospital.
"I didn't know it was that sharp!" she retorted for the tenth time. It was their first fight--he had never said a cross word to her before, but she could see genuine concern in his eyes...and she liked it. Dr. Mohammad told Consuela Arroyo the wound needed stitches, and the amazed nurse began preparation.
"What do you mean I have ovaries?!" said former Senator Evermore Breadman, on the other side of the hospital.
"You have ovaries," repeated the doctor who had just examined the MRI ordered after Breadman's last colonoscopy. "Some people have both male and female sex organs--it's more common than you would think."
"I don't have ovaries!" hollered Breadman, starting to turn purple. "You made a mistake!"
"Senator, please! It's no big deal. We discover this about once a month. It's not like you have a uterus."
"Well, I should think not!" hollered Breadman.
"Really, Senator, you must calm down. I think you better lie down and let me take your blood pressure." Usually it was the retired Marines and professional athletes that flipped out over this news--the politicians usually got over it faster.
"It's Lynnette Wong--she's been sabotaging me with her herbs!"
"No, Senator--you were born this way, I can assure you."
A few miles away, the Heurich Society was also having a bad day. "What do you mean that's the end of Operation Fenty?" asked the member who lived in Reston and paid no attention to city politics in Washington.
"He lost the Democratic primary," replied Henry Samuelson, who had spent three hours to cast his own special ballot against Fenty at one of the early voting stations, and was convinced that Mayor Fenty himself was somehow responsible for the cascade of problems that had caused it to take that long. "He can't win as an independent--he's made too many enemies."
"Who will go to Dubai for us?"
"Not him," replied Samuelson, who had always thought Operation Fenty was a disappointment.
"We might still be able to use Fenty," countered the Chair of the Heurich Society. "He will need a job."
"He can't be controlled!" replied Samuelson angrily. "He always has his own agenda."
"Men who need jobs will take the agenda proffered," countered the Chair. Down the hall, the butler plunging the toilet and swearing in Chinese would have nodded in agreement had he been at his normal listening post.
"What do you mean your email account was hijacked?" Charles Wilkinson Montgomery asked his son Charles Wu, who was typing furiously at the keyboard and swearing in Chinese while his father tried to repair a desk lamp in his apartment in upper Northwest. Wu was already finding it difficult to get his spy work done with his long missing father and unknown brother temporarily living in a neighboring apartment building, but this week had been particularly trying--suddenly everything was breaking, and his father insisted on trying to repair things instead of letting Wu go buy new ones. First it was the broken shoe heel, then the cracked drying rack, then the coat hook screws--now the lamp. "Somebody got into my email account through the Internet," replied Wu, who was scrupulously circumspect in all his email postings but, nonetheless, was aghast that his exceedingly complicated password [which he changed once a month] had somehow been breached. (In a couple hours, Henry Samuelson would return home from the Heurich Society meeting and find out that the computer program he had been running for two years to try to crack Wu's email password had finally done it--but the email folders would be emptied out and the password reclaimed by the time Samuelson realized it.) Wu's father, who rarely used email for anything more than trading bird-sighting stories or posting updates on the health of his other son, Phillip Montgomery, didn't see why it was such a big deal. He reconnected the wire in the desk lamp and plugged it back in, failing to notice the tiny spark of electricity jumping in the wall socket.
"What do you mean you have no driver's license?" Congressman Herrmark asked his legislative aide over the phone. Ann Bishis was sitting in the waiting area of the CVS pharmacist on Capitol Hill, cringing as she tried to explain to her boss that they would not let her pick up Sudafed for him without a driver's license. ("It's a semi-controlled substance--" she began.) "I know that!" he hollered. "What do you men you have no driver's license?" She told him her wallet was pickpocketed at Soho, and then she was moving, so she didn't report it stolen but simply mailed in a request for a changed-address driver's license, and three weeks had gone by, and she still didn't have it. "Why didn't you go in person?!" he bellowed, as she moved the cellphone further from her ear. ("I didn't want to take time off from work--" she began.) "I DON'T CARE! YOU'RE FIRED!" The little old lady waiting for her blood pressure medicine could hear that even without her hearing aid, and patted Bishis tenderly on the knee. The Congressman had actually fired and re-hired four people in the past two months, but the Chief of Staff had told Bishis this was quite common in election years. Bishis put down the phone and stared blankly at the cold and flu season display in front of her. The little old lady stood up, pulled down a tissue box, ripped it open, and offered it to Bishis, whose eyes were dry.
Back at the G.W. emergency room, Dr. Mohammad was examining another bloody bandage. "What do you mean he landed in the flower pot?" There was a piece of pottery shard sticking out of the man's forehead, and Dr. Mohammad regarded the man's wife critically, wondering if she had clocked him with the pot herself.
"I don't know!" she exclaimed. "He knew it was my favorite pot, and he tripped and fell right into it." She was shaking her head in annoyance. "He didn't even want to come to the hospital!" she added. "He's always bleeding somewhere, he says, because of the ibuprofen," she concluded. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head in annoyance again--though Dr. Mohammad was uncertain at this point if she was annoyed with the ibuprofen or her husband. The doctor told nurse Arroyo to prepare again for putting in stitches.
"What do you mean he cut his hand on a filing cabinet?" asked the emergency room intake nurse to the next man that approached her, who had his arm around another new patient. (The injuries were beginning to seem comical to the intake nurse, who was accustomed to seeing a parade of knife and gunshot wounds on the weekend shifts.)
"I don't know!" exclaimed Charles Wu. "He was working on a sticky drawer! I told him not to bother with it!"
Back at Wu's apartment, the spark in the electrical outlet had caught the drywall on fire. Then the fire (and smoke) had quickly spread to the neighboring apartment, where an alarmed accountant from KPMG had ran out into the hallway and dialed 911 from his cellphone. By the time Wu would return three hours later to the gaping hole in the wall and smoke-damaged debris, the firemen would already be gone...and Wu would decide that perhaps he did love his father but it was time for the man to return to England.
Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac was pleased with her new strategy of tormenting people through multiple tiny strikes, rather than expending her energy on large-scale operations. Humans are so easily distracted, she thought, as she reached up to the 14th Street Bridge and punctured another tire. Nearby, the pink dolphins were not amused.
Washington Water Woman will be heading out the West Coast later this week, but expects to return to blogging about Washington in two weeks....
"It's for sharpening eye pencils," Bridezilla said with a reproving glance at her erstwhile boyfriend. "I needed to clean out the fawn brown so I could use the raisin quartz. Nothing else fits in there except my pinkie!"
"You should have used a Q-Tip," her erstwhile boyfriend said for the tenth time since he had picked her up and driven her across the bridge to George Washington University Hospital.
"I didn't know it was that sharp!" she retorted for the tenth time. It was their first fight--he had never said a cross word to her before, but she could see genuine concern in his eyes...and she liked it. Dr. Mohammad told Consuela Arroyo the wound needed stitches, and the amazed nurse began preparation.
"What do you mean I have ovaries?!" said former Senator Evermore Breadman, on the other side of the hospital.
"You have ovaries," repeated the doctor who had just examined the MRI ordered after Breadman's last colonoscopy. "Some people have both male and female sex organs--it's more common than you would think."
"I don't have ovaries!" hollered Breadman, starting to turn purple. "You made a mistake!"
"Senator, please! It's no big deal. We discover this about once a month. It's not like you have a uterus."
"Well, I should think not!" hollered Breadman.
"Really, Senator, you must calm down. I think you better lie down and let me take your blood pressure." Usually it was the retired Marines and professional athletes that flipped out over this news--the politicians usually got over it faster.
"It's Lynnette Wong--she's been sabotaging me with her herbs!"
"No, Senator--you were born this way, I can assure you."
A few miles away, the Heurich Society was also having a bad day. "What do you mean that's the end of Operation Fenty?" asked the member who lived in Reston and paid no attention to city politics in Washington.
"He lost the Democratic primary," replied Henry Samuelson, who had spent three hours to cast his own special ballot against Fenty at one of the early voting stations, and was convinced that Mayor Fenty himself was somehow responsible for the cascade of problems that had caused it to take that long. "He can't win as an independent--he's made too many enemies."
"Who will go to Dubai for us?"
"Not him," replied Samuelson, who had always thought Operation Fenty was a disappointment.
"We might still be able to use Fenty," countered the Chair of the Heurich Society. "He will need a job."
"He can't be controlled!" replied Samuelson angrily. "He always has his own agenda."
"Men who need jobs will take the agenda proffered," countered the Chair. Down the hall, the butler plunging the toilet and swearing in Chinese would have nodded in agreement had he been at his normal listening post.
"What do you mean your email account was hijacked?" Charles Wilkinson Montgomery asked his son Charles Wu, who was typing furiously at the keyboard and swearing in Chinese while his father tried to repair a desk lamp in his apartment in upper Northwest. Wu was already finding it difficult to get his spy work done with his long missing father and unknown brother temporarily living in a neighboring apartment building, but this week had been particularly trying--suddenly everything was breaking, and his father insisted on trying to repair things instead of letting Wu go buy new ones. First it was the broken shoe heel, then the cracked drying rack, then the coat hook screws--now the lamp. "Somebody got into my email account through the Internet," replied Wu, who was scrupulously circumspect in all his email postings but, nonetheless, was aghast that his exceedingly complicated password [which he changed once a month] had somehow been breached. (In a couple hours, Henry Samuelson would return home from the Heurich Society meeting and find out that the computer program he had been running for two years to try to crack Wu's email password had finally done it--but the email folders would be emptied out and the password reclaimed by the time Samuelson realized it.) Wu's father, who rarely used email for anything more than trading bird-sighting stories or posting updates on the health of his other son, Phillip Montgomery, didn't see why it was such a big deal. He reconnected the wire in the desk lamp and plugged it back in, failing to notice the tiny spark of electricity jumping in the wall socket.
"What do you mean you have no driver's license?" Congressman Herrmark asked his legislative aide over the phone. Ann Bishis was sitting in the waiting area of the CVS pharmacist on Capitol Hill, cringing as she tried to explain to her boss that they would not let her pick up Sudafed for him without a driver's license. ("It's a semi-controlled substance--" she began.) "I know that!" he hollered. "What do you men you have no driver's license?" She told him her wallet was pickpocketed at Soho, and then she was moving, so she didn't report it stolen but simply mailed in a request for a changed-address driver's license, and three weeks had gone by, and she still didn't have it. "Why didn't you go in person?!" he bellowed, as she moved the cellphone further from her ear. ("I didn't want to take time off from work--" she began.) "I DON'T CARE! YOU'RE FIRED!" The little old lady waiting for her blood pressure medicine could hear that even without her hearing aid, and patted Bishis tenderly on the knee. The Congressman had actually fired and re-hired four people in the past two months, but the Chief of Staff had told Bishis this was quite common in election years. Bishis put down the phone and stared blankly at the cold and flu season display in front of her. The little old lady stood up, pulled down a tissue box, ripped it open, and offered it to Bishis, whose eyes were dry.
Back at the G.W. emergency room, Dr. Mohammad was examining another bloody bandage. "What do you mean he landed in the flower pot?" There was a piece of pottery shard sticking out of the man's forehead, and Dr. Mohammad regarded the man's wife critically, wondering if she had clocked him with the pot herself.
"I don't know!" she exclaimed. "He knew it was my favorite pot, and he tripped and fell right into it." She was shaking her head in annoyance. "He didn't even want to come to the hospital!" she added. "He's always bleeding somewhere, he says, because of the ibuprofen," she concluded. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head in annoyance again--though Dr. Mohammad was uncertain at this point if she was annoyed with the ibuprofen or her husband. The doctor told nurse Arroyo to prepare again for putting in stitches.
"What do you mean he cut his hand on a filing cabinet?" asked the emergency room intake nurse to the next man that approached her, who had his arm around another new patient. (The injuries were beginning to seem comical to the intake nurse, who was accustomed to seeing a parade of knife and gunshot wounds on the weekend shifts.)
"I don't know!" exclaimed Charles Wu. "He was working on a sticky drawer! I told him not to bother with it!"
Back at Wu's apartment, the spark in the electrical outlet had caught the drywall on fire. Then the fire (and smoke) had quickly spread to the neighboring apartment, where an alarmed accountant from KPMG had ran out into the hallway and dialed 911 from his cellphone. By the time Wu would return three hours later to the gaping hole in the wall and smoke-damaged debris, the firemen would already be gone...and Wu would decide that perhaps he did love his father but it was time for the man to return to England.
Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac was pleased with her new strategy of tormenting people through multiple tiny strikes, rather than expending her energy on large-scale operations. Humans are so easily distracted, she thought, as she reached up to the 14th Street Bridge and punctured another tire. Nearby, the pink dolphins were not amused.
Washington Water Woman will be heading out the West Coast later this week, but expects to return to blogging about Washington in two weeks....
posted by washingtonwaterwoman | 11:07 AM
|
0 comments
