A Tribute to Pirate Whit

This is a tribute to my dear friend, Whitney, who doesn't read this on a regular basis, so I can embarrass her to my heart's content. (Thanks for reminding me of these stories, Em).

Whitney and I met on Study Abroad in London, then lived together at BYU, then played incessantly when we both lived on the East Coast and we had a fabulous hospital adventure in each locale.

1995: Edinburgh, Scotland. One sunny morning dear Whit was flicking her fabulous blonde locks out of her face and accidently scratched her cornea. We didn't realize how bad it was until a few hours later at some castle, and the 2 of us had to leave the rest of our group and train back to the city to the hospital. 

 I wish I could insert some audio of our crazy Scottish nurse, "Your eyesight's precious, dear." Anyway, they made her hold a paddle in front of her good eye, placed her a few feet from an eye chart, and asked her, "What can you see?" 

Apparently, she couldn't see the eye chart because Whit started doing the "romper room" action around the room instead. "I see you, I see Shelby, I see the tongue depressers, I see the window."

The nurse was very confused and I think I wet my pants.

Of course, an eye patch makes ever situation funnier (hence the Pirate Whit). It was also entertaining at the Chinese restaurant later that evening watching Whit have some depth perception challenges with the double threat of the "lazy susan" and dim lighting.

We also later that night woke up our program director to let him know we were OK, and caught him so unawares that he put his toupee on backward.

1996: Provo, UT. In the middle of the night while we were at BYU, Whitney woke up with some chest pain. We drove to the ER in Provo and they put her in a room, and put on the EKG machine. She was fine and was feeling better. Anyway, Whit rolled over, toward the monitor, and unbeknownst to her, she accidently pulled off the sensors on her chest. 

The sensors suddenly had no reading, so the monitor started beeping, and Whitney started screaming, "I'm flat-lining, I'm flat-lining!!"

The nurses came in and informed her, "Honey, if you can say it, you're not flat-lining."

1999 or 2000: New York City, New York. Whit was feeling some excruciating abdominal pain so we took a cab from her apt. in Hell's Kitchen and told the cabbie, "Take us to the closest hospital." 

NOTE: Do not ever do this in NYC. Always tell them a specific hospital, or you can find yourself in something that seems like a bad movie set. Case in point--

We ended up at the ER that had huge, broken, bio-hazard bins in the lobby, which were over-flowing and 2 or 3 homeless people asleep in broken wheelchairs (held together with tape) down the hall. 

And the "piece de resistance," there were 10  people in the waiting room watching "Silence of the Lambs" with the lights off. Seriously. . . Silence of the Lambs. . . in the hospital?

Thanks for the memories, Whit.