Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Watermelon Baby

Today, at the information booth, our Spanish cleaning lady, who only speaks Spanish ,and therefore, I have limited ability to communicate with her (generally I am best with conversations involving numbers up to 10). She comes up to Stusi -one of the bilingual girls I work with - and tells her that there's a woman who has been in the handicapped stall for a long time and she's using a lot of toilet paper. (Stusi told me this later, I couldn't understand the cleaning lady because no numbers were involved in the conversation).
I would say one of my greatest fears is having to help someone birth a baby in the bathroom while I'm working. I have no fantasys about the miracle of birth, until God sees fit to make me understand the beauty, I will still think of it as just a really bad menstruel period, that will cost money when it's done . . .. This event is having all the makings of my worst nightmare coming true. Stusi keeps asking the woman if she needs help and if we should call an ambulance. She keeps saying:"No" "I've had a couple of kids already" "I know what I'm doing"" I just called my husband 10 minutes ago , he's coming to get me " -none of these are "good" responses in my book. Stusi stays in the bathroom talking to the woman and our cleaning lady.
The bath room lady has been in there for a couple of hours. There has been a lot of well publicized drug activity in the park lately. Some guy died from a drug overdose, in broad day light , in front of a newspaper photographer, while I was away. We have a sign up in the mens' room (Stusi's idea) "See Something-Say Something" Some witty sword wrote on it "Stop watching me pee".
Finally, I can see that they are at an impasse. We don't actually know what the woman is doing in there, but she can't live in the handicap stall. A handicapped person might need to go to the bath room. I go get a Ranger. A poor, underpaid, overqualified Ranger to come investigate. Something about the Rangers deep voice causes the lady to stir and realize that she doesn't have to go home , but she can't stay there anymore. She gathers herself together and leaves the rest room all the while assuring us that she is okay and her husband is coming to get her.
She is a skinny little woman who doesn't look pregnant to me. However, she is cradling her trash bag of belongings like a dead baby ... .at least that's what we think. Someone, I don't recall who, calls EMTs. One of the guys I work with comes back from his Gay rally lunch break and goes in to the ladies room to look around. He comes out and says it looks like watermelon on the floor. I think this is a euphamism. I am really grossed out because I'm thinking it's blood and guts.
Our cleaning lady gathers up the trash to throw it out. Stusi tells her to put it aside , in case that's where the evedience of the dead baby is. EMT's arrive. They look for the lady. The Ranger has been following her. They inspect the trash. It's watermelon. That lady apparently was in there, for 2 hours, eating watermelon, by herself. Watermelon, in the capacious handicapped stall. No baby. Thank God !
Though, it had to be shady what she was doing. I think the watermelon was a coverup for something else. Perhaps a hip new way to process crack or heroin. The Ranger caught up to the woman, there was no dead baby in her precious bundle of trash bags. Though they did arrest one of her companions for an outstanding warrant, so it wasn't a completely erroneous accusation. SOMETHING was going on. We're just never going to know what it was.
Thank goodness it wasn't a watermelon baby.

1 Comments:

Blogger Perdita said...

I had to come back and read it again.

Side splitting goodness

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 3:35:00 PM  

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