The Emergency Room Story

This happened during my first year of law school, and I swear that everything in this story is true. 

One night, while my boyfriend and I were getting read to fall asleep, he leaned over to kiss me goodnight. Unfortunately, it was dark and his nose hit my eye instead. It HURT, and I wasted absolutely no time being a baby about it. The pain wasn’t going away, and I ran to the bathroom hoping that it was caused by something being in my eye. Unfortunately, nothing was in my eye, which could only mean one thing—he had scratched my cornea.

I knew that this was a scratched cornea because I had experienced this injury before. In fourth grade, when I first got contacts, I scratched the hell out of my cornea and had to wear a patch on my eye for a week (well, maybe it wasn’t a week, but it felt like a week). For some reason unknown to me to this day, my parents were merciful and didn’t make me go to school with the eye patch. That could have been due to the extreme light sensitivity, though. Either way, I appreciated it. 

I have had minor scratches since then that have all healed very quickly, so I was hopeful that my eye would heal overnight. Except that it really, really hurt this time, to the point where I cried myself to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was still in pain. I had no idea what to do, so like any responsible, fully grown and independent adult, I called my parents at 6:30AM. 

My dad, who can be a bit of a worrier, insisted I go to the hospital. I told my boyfriend, hoping he would jump out of bed, to my rescue, and rush me to the ER. Instead, he responded, “Can I take a shower first?”

I couldn’t believe he asked me that after I said I needed to go to the emergency room, but I knew that letting him shower would wake him up and put him in a better mood. Begrudgingly, I responded, “FINE.” 

As he showered, I sat there panicking. What if I had to wear an eye patch? My first year oral argument was in one week—what if I had to wear it during that? Or even just during class, where a professor with zero empathy and an obsession with the Socratic Method would insist on grilling me BECAUSE I had the patch? Oh my god, what if I have cancer? (I should mention at this point that I’m kind of a hypochondriac. And by “kind of,” I mean that I regularly think I have some rare form of cancer.). I went through every horrific scenario in my head, until finally my boyfriend emerged from the shower. I was relieved to see him getting ready until he asked me:

“Can I make some coffee?”

Now I was mad. I mean, what part of “emergency room” did he not understand? I’m facing the possibility of an eye patch and cancer, and he wanted coffee? I told him “NO!” and insisted we leave right then. 

We arrived, and he dropped me off by the door so that he could park. As I’m about to walk in, this poor girl teenage girl walks up behind me. She’s moaning and doubled over in pain, escorted by her understandably upset mother. I decided that her situation was more serious than mine, and let her go first. The hospital staff must have agreed that her situation was pretty serious, as no one remained at the check-in window after she came in. I stood there for what seemed like forever. 

Finally, they started checking me in and asking me a series of questions. Another paranoid thought crossed my mind—they were going to think my boyfriend hit me! They were going to think I was abused, and they would arrest him and cart him away and oh my god this was going to suck. 

Hospital Guy: (clearly only reading off the sheet of standard questions and not actually thinking I was a victim of abuse) “Are you the victim of domestic violence?” 

Me: “No.”

Hospital Guy: “So. . .when did this happen again?” (He had already asked me how it happened)

Me: “Around midnight”

Hospital Guy: “And. . .where?”

Me: “In bed.”

Hospital Guy: “Uh huh. And what exactly happened again?”

Me: “My boyfriend leaned over to kiss me and his nose hit my eye.”

Hospital Guy: “Right. . . so this happened last night? In bed?”

Me: “Yes.”

At this point, I was sure that my boyfriend was going to get arrested for being a woman beater and I was going to have to bail him out. 

We were escorted back to one of those emergency room beds. The bed I was in was next to the girl who came in before me, separated only by a hospital curtain. The poor girl was moaning horribly in pain, which was not exactly helping my anxiety. 

The diagnosis part of the story isn’t that exciting. The doctor came in and confirmed that I did in fact scratch my cornea, and that I wasn’t dying. The only thing really noteworthy is that the doctor seemed unusually cheerful. So did the nurse, actually. I didn’t think much of it, except that it was weird to be so cheerful in an emergency room where the girl in the next area was still writhing in extreme pain. 

The doctor and nurse left for a bit. My boyfriend and I were just sitting quietly for a few minutes, when suddenly, he says:

“Oh my god. I just realized something”

Me: “What?”

Him: “They think this happened when we were having sex.” 

Me: “No. No way.” 

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The check-in guy’s disbelief of my story, the doctor and nurse’s cheerfulness—it all made sense. He was right. And all we could do was laugh. There was no point in denying it now. So we start laughing, and about five minutes later, the nurse comes in and tells us that her and her colleagues are all laughing at us. Like I said, no point in denying it at this stage. 

To add to the absurdity of the situation, they had just put moaning girl on a morphine drip, causing her to loudly proclaim, “When I grow up, I want to be a nurse!” (By the way, the girl had shingles, but I’m assuming she recovered, and hopefully, fulfilled her dream of being a nurse).