“Hey! I’m not a part of this!”

The gray-haired lady was distraught. Struggling with a wheelchair that she had just extracted from the front lobby of the North Entrance to the hospital. The passenger-side door of her car was open. The wheelchair, however, in just obeying the laws of gravity, insisted on rolling down the gentle slope.

I’m walking up the driveway of the hospital’s north entrance, pulling my computer case, thinking it was going to be another great day. Yet quickly becoming aware there is something a little intense unfolding in front of me.

The gray-haired lady is getting highly distraught. Frustrated. Befuddled.

Being super cautious about lawsuits and liabilities of what a contractor person could or could not be doing on the front steps of a hospital is the first thing that pops into my mind. But I realize I can at least keep a law-of-gravity-abiding wheelchair from frustrating what is apparently an already frustrating experience.

The gray-haired lady is muttering something about pillows. Extracting pillows from the open car door. What actually needs to be extracted from the car and transferred into the wheelchair, I have no clue. But I assumed it would be an elderly person with some kind of infirmity . . . for that is pretty much the demographics of this hospital. Hence my fear of liability.

But what emerged was a young lady, bare midriff about to explode, frustrated that she had now dropped her cell phone and could not bend over enough to get it.

The words “maternity,” “third-floor,” “can’t leave the car here,” “how to get there,” rolled into a confusing conversation between what I now presumed was an about-to-be grandmother and an about-to-be-new mom.

I volunteered to push the wheelchair with the about-to-be-new-mom into the hospital lobby, to at least get that part of the immediate crisis resolved, and to get help from the Volunteers manning the lobby. The gray-haired lady grabbed my computer tote-case and insisted on bringing that into the lobby as well. I attempted to reassure it that it would be just fine, nobody was going to drive over it. It could momentarily stay where it was.

Then, through the revolving doors, another woman frantically waving. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it.”

Take care of what, I am not certain.

I continue to push the wheel chair with the young lady who is now having a contraction. The gray-haired lady abandons my computer tote bag and returns to her car. The frantically-waving new lady grabs my computer tote-bag. We all make it through the revolving door – in serial fashion.

And the frantically-waving lady says that she will take my computer tote-bag to the third floor and hastily starts to lead the way.

Whoa!

I look at the young lady having a contraction. She looks at me. Somehow, we both know the ridiculousness of this little twist in the scenario. And we both manage a laugh.

“Hey! I’m not a part of this!” I blurt out.

Now I am the befuddled one. How in the h – e – double-toothpick do I graciously get out of this!?

And the frantically-waving lady, who I have quickly come to the conclusion is probably the nurse-midwife, turns with a look of embarrassed astonishment on her face.

“Oh! I see.” She stammered.

Please! Mercifully! I hope she thought I was at least the grandfather!

The Refectory Manager