The Sounds of Nature

In the distance, a few sirens disturb the serenity and I can hear the train to the city pass by. It’s about a mile away. Overhead, a plane is making its way over. I suspect it’s about to land.

I’m sitting on the porch because a handful of wasps, or are they hornets?, have decided to make my back entrance their playground. I don’t have the interest to just walk through them today. They haven’t stung me yet but they scare me. Why can’t they find some other place to hover, for example over the flower bed? 

Instead I walk around to the front, where the relatively new porch loveseat welcomes me. Even without the cushions, yet to be bought, it is quite comfortable. So here I am. Exhausted. It was a busy call weekend. Not the worst. That would have been a month ago when I set a new personal record of the number of new patient encounters. I had said then that when you start waking up patients late at night to perform an infectious disease consultation, you know it’s time to go home. It was 10 pm. 

No, this weekend was bad not so much because of the volume of patients but because I’m battling a cold, on top of my seasonal allergies and it’s quite impossible to talk, or rather speed-dictate a consult, and breath through my mouth simultaneously. I’m hoping the transcribers got everything through all my coughs, sniffles, and attempts to clear my throat. I don’t want to have to fill in empty spaces when I go to sign off on my dictations, because I’m sure I won’t remember what I had said.

The sky is overcast. I had had plans to set a few plants out in the garden but now I’m so comfortable right here. It’s going to rain anyway, right? So maybe, I’ll just go in and grab a mango (or two) and devour it while continuing to enjoy the sounds of nature.

It’s nice out here on my porch. I should do this more often.

Oh wait.What is that? No sirens but here comes flashing red, blue, and yellow lights. First a police car, then a fire-engine, then a paramedic van and they stop in front of me. I half begin to wonder “oh oh, what have I done?” But they go into the house across from me. I think to myself. I did see a lady come back home but I didn’t hear any ruckus. Obviously, I’ve watched one too many crime shows. But it turns out an elderly man there is in distress. They bring him out on a stretcher, upright. He’s wearing an oxygen mask. I always wondered about the first few moments of a patient’s trip to the emergency room. Not too much drama from my vantage point in this case. He probably will arrive to the emergency room at a local hospital with a chief complaint of “found down”, “shortness of breath”, “chest pain” or something like that.

Well, I guess that takes away the desire for the mangoes. It is Monday night after all. Got to put the trash and recycling out.