While at the lab today…

So there we (me and mom) are sitting in the waiting room minding our own business. There were other people waiting as well. Here comes a mother, with 3, yes I said 3 children. She had a very small boy infant, in a papoose type thingy, and 2 little girls (I will guess and say 2 and 4yrs old). I know I probably shouldn’t say this but they were Spanish and did not speak any English. As we are all waiting to be called for either blood, or x-ray, or whatever, the girls are not quiet. You can tell the older one is the sick one. The middle one is the one that doesn’t listen and totally ignores when mom says NO. She was all over the Fire alarm several times and I don’t know how it did not go off. Thank God it did not. The mom had the oldest little girl drinking lots of water. You could tell her tummy was bothering her. The girls were walking around and all of a sudden the sick one just vomited everywhere. I felt so sorry for her. I mean kids don’t understand why they are getting sick and what is happening to them. Poor thing. Here she is vomiting, crying and her little sister has this horrified look on her face like OMG is stuff going to start spewing out of me now too? I know it shouldn’t have been funny, but the looks on their faces were priceless! Don’t worry I didn’t laugh out loud. But now there was vomit all over the floor, b/c of the sick one and mom is trying to make her come to the trash can to at least be sick over that. The little girl is froze, and the smaller one is just staring and in shock. She looked scared to death. So I hurried up and went into the bathroom to get some paper towels because I knew that people would be slipping on the wet area there. I went to the bathroom, the first one was locked and in use, the second one too. I was thinking, they are never all in use. Finally the last one was open. I grabbed a million paper towels and came out. I handed some to the mom and went to the floor to lay them out over the wet area. All of a sudden a loud and I mean LOUD RINGING ALARM type sound went off. I turned to look at the fire alarm and the little girl was nowhere near it. Then I realized there was a defibrillator right next to me on the wall. I turned and looked and sure enough that sweet little girl (can you hear my sarcasm?) was standing on the chair and had opened it!! A million things were flying through my mind. I swear all of my Spanish went right out of my head. All I could think of was No Bueno (no good) and Muy Mal (very bad). I was horrified that she had done this. At this point mom is in the bathroom with the other 2 children and had just left this one out there. OMG!!! Finally I was able to get the attention of one of the employees to let them know that it was a mistake and that this needed to be turned off. She never even looked my way, but said “yeah a security guard is on his way to turn it off”. I then said we also need clean up over here as well, as someone got sick too. “Oh ok”. When the mother finally returned I was still whirling from all of this and all I could think of to tell her was “Tu mamas no bueno” as I pointed to the defibrillator! I was thinking in my head... “Oh good going, Tam, and to think I speak fluent Spanish? Am I sure about this?” It all went right outta my head in a freaking flash too!! I was irritated at myself that I couldn’t “find” my Spanish words at all. Then again, I have a hard enough time finding my everyday English words so what the hell was I expecting!



So what do you do when you are waiting at your lab??