New Year's Eve is, typically, a time of joyous celebration. You and all your best friends dress up all nice and plan to dance the night away and maybe even snag a kiss when the clock strikes twelve. That was all in the works for me and my friends on Dec. 31. However, in a strange and completely unfortunate series of events, we found ourselves taking an Uber to the nearest hospital well before midnight. You would never expect anything that happened that night could actually happen. Nonetheless, it did and there we were telling our driver to pull up as close as possible to the doors of the emergency room.
The hospital was quiet when we entered and there were only a few other unlucky folks in triage that were waiting to see a doctor. It wasn't a busy night, as far as I could tell, and the nurses lacked a sense of panic or urgency that you might normally expect.
My friend was suffering from a broken nose, and while most of the blood had been taken care of, I knew she was in a lot of pain. She was taken into the back of the hospital to get seen and get a cat scan of the damage. Time seemed to drag on and on and on, but finally it was midnight and it was the most pitiful transition into the New Year I ever experienced. Besides a small "woo" and a few exchanges of "Happy New Year," the hospital was the same as it was before. I don't know what I was expecting. The hospital is no place to celebrate. The TV in my friends room was playing "American Ninja Warrior" and there wasn't a clock. Regardless, she cheered with the nurse despite her newly fractured septum.
The experienc made me realize that New Year's Eve is one of the most hyped up holidays we celebrate. A change in minutes and seconds doesn't mean much when you are inside a hospital. You can make resolutions any time you want. You don't have to wait until the clock turns 12 in order to start fresh. I also realized how fortunate we really were. My friend will heal in a week or two, and life will go on. Spending a few hours one night with a nice nurse and missing out on the ball dropping didn't really ruin much. There will always be another party and another overhyped holiday. I just realized that you can't take a single thing for granted and that even though it may be hard to do, expect the unexpected. It was a very humbling experience and it made me realize that you don't need to be in a dark club full of strangers on New Year's Eve.
And a major plus to this hospital adventure was that none of us were hungover on Jan. 1. Happy New Year!
