Page 46 of The Party Line

“What point?”

“That I got my stubborn streak from you,” I answered.

“Hmmph!” he snorted, then coughed again.

Luck was with us that evening. The waiting room at the hospital was empty, and they took us right on back to a cubicle. A nurse that looked to be about Gina Lou’s age pushed the curtain back, told Jasper to have a seat on the narrow bed, and asked him enough questions to exasperate him. She finally asked him to remove his sweater so that she could take his vital signs.

“I don’t need to do that. I’m alive and kickin’. I just need you to give me some medicine so I can go home,” he argued.

“Sorry, sir, but that’s not the way this works.” She winked at me. “We have to do a few tests and diagnose your problem so we know what kind of medicine to give you.”

“I can tell you what my problem is,” he snapped as he removed his sweater. “And if you wasn’t hard of hearing, you would already know. I’ve got the croup.”

She ran a thermometer over his forehead and behind his ear. “You might have the croup, but we have to be sure.”

“Why did you do that?” Jasper asked.

“You have two degrees of temperature. That means you have a fever and an infection somewhere.” She slipped a blood pressure cuff around his bony upper arm.

“You’re about to cut all the circulation off,” he barked at her when the cuff tightened, sending him into another cough.

“Just for a couple of seconds. See there, it’s already loosening up. Blood pressure is fine. Someone will be in soon from the lab. Just sit tight.”

“Can I put my sweater back on?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. Need some help?”

“I been dressin’ myself since I was a little kid.” He proved his independence by slipping his arms back into his sweater and buttoning it.

“What does the lab do?” he asked when she was gone.

“Someone will take blood from your arm,” I answered honestly.

“Oh, no, they are not!” He started to stand up. “We are going home. I will not give my permission for anyone to put a needle in my arm.”

“If you don’t sit down and behave, I’ll sell my place to Derrick, and he will plow under all the strawberries and plant marijuana. Do you want to smell skunk every time you walk outside to get a breath of fresh air? What about Sassy? What would that do to her?”

He sat down on the bed and focused on the wall ahead of him. “They keep it cold in these places to chill an old man’s blood. If it was hot, we’d bleed to death when they stick a needle in us.”

“Probably so.” I shivered and wished I’d brought a jacket with me.

“I bet they don’t put clocks in these places because they charge by the minute. I saw that woman write down the time with my vitals. Granny called that taking my temperature, but she did it with a thermometer under my tongue, like an honest woman,” he whispered, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “That thing has a hidden camera in it, and they are watching us. If I get off this bed and start toward the door, they will rush in here with needles to suck my lifeblood right out of me.”

“That ‘thing’ is a smoke detector,” I explained. “You’ve got one in your house. Insurance companies insist that we all have them.”

“It might be, but that blinkin’ red light means the camera is on and keeping watch on us. Maybe so they can see if we open up all of them cabinets over there”—he pointed to his left—“and steal stuff. Why else would they put people in here and trust them not to go snooping?”

“You’ve really never been in an emergency room before?” I asked.

His eyes darted around the room and finally went back to the ceiling. He waved and raised his voice. “No, I have not been in one of these rooms before. But I’m tellin’ whoever is watching me on that camera—if you ain’t here in five minutes, I’m leaving.”

Within a minute, a lab tech arrived with a tote full of tubes and needles. “Hello, Mr. Carlson. I’m here to draw a little blood.”

I glanced up at the smoke detector and wondered if he could be right.

“I ain’t been called by my last name in more’n seventy years. I’m just Jasper,” he told her. “You ain’t old enough to be a nurse or a doctor.”

“I’m not either one,” she told him. “I’m a lab technician.”

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