3 AM phone call...

I was sleeping like a baby last night. For the first time in a long time I managed to go to bed before eleven at night and I'm pretty sure I would have slept the whole night through...but, the universe had other plans for me.

First things first, nobody and I mean nobody should have to wake up to the ring setting I have on my piece of shit cell phone. So when it rang at 3 in the morning I made a promise to myself to find one of my Korean friends and change that horrible horrible ring. It took me a while to focus before I could find the phone in the cold darkness of my bedroom. Korean phones ring forever by the way, the just ring and ring and ring. I finally found it and answered in a surprisingly calm voice.

At three in the morning when your phone rings one has three expectations. The first is that a drunk friend has decided they want to tell you about their night and share all the funny things that are only really funny if you were there and drunk yourself. The second possibility is that a family member was calling me to let me know that something very tragic had taken place and I was going to need to hop on a plane and fly back to the states for the worse day of my life. The third possibility is that someone, be they friend or acquaintance has decided they are in need of some sexual release and you would be just the person to help them achieve that. So which three in the morning phone call did I get? None of the above, now I have a forth expectation to add to my list of late night phone calls.

Some background information. Every month my work shift changes. This month I am working weekends there for my days off are on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This means I work two 12 hour shifts on Friday and Saturday and then 9-5 on Sunday and 1-9 on Monday...it's really one of the crappiest shifts you can get and I volunteered for it because my good buddy wanted to hang out a lot this month. This also means that for December when my shift returns to Monday through Friday 1-9 that I will have to work 8 days in a row because the new shift begins next Monday giving me no days off until the following Friday.

Recently, as in last week, my good buddies dad had two heart-attacks in one day. Luck for him he had the second heart attack in the hospital. Both my friends parents live in Korea so he was able to talk to some people pretty quickly on the phone. However, he was unable to go and visit his dad until this week. I guess, in Korea you can only see your family member for ten minutes every two hours and his dad lives about four hours away. So he headed south to go check on his dad this Monday and gets back today.

What does all of this have to do with my late night phone call. I'm getting there, calm down. The late night phone call was from my friends wife who stayed here because she has tutoring jobs. She also has a little thing called Endometriosis. I guess the short definition for endometriosis is that it tissue which is usually found in the uterus grows outside the uterus causing great great pain during the menstrual cycle. I'm pretty sure I butchered that definition but it affects women and from what I witnessed last night it is some of the most painful shit around. As a man I guess you could imagine it like this...if your balls swelled to the size of oranges and then were squeezed and twisted slowly over the period of an entire week that would be somewhere in the ball park of endometriosis. I will now give you a moment to process that.....

So she called me because we are friends and her husband is out of town. She needed a ride to the hospital which is about a ten minute car ride from where we all live. I could hear the pain in her voice between all the crying. It's one thing to be woken up by a fucked up cell phone ring, it's another thing all together to answer that phone and hear cries of pain on the other line. So I quickly got dressed and ran down to their apartment where I found her curled up into a little ball on their floor. She had hot tears running down her face and for a moment I thought I was going to shit myself.

My friends wife is just over 5'10 and doesn't weigh very much at all. She has a thick southern accent and swears like a sailor when she is feeling good so you can imagine the words coming out of her mouth when I arrived there. Apparently she had just gotten her hair dyed because what used to be very short blonde hair on her head was now very brown short hair on her head. So naturally, when I walk into someone apartment late at night and see them crying in pain on the floor the first thing out of my mouth is "Oh, wow, you dyed your hair?" This didn't go over to well and I was called some things I had to look up in the dictionary.

So, I bent down, picked her up and started the to take her down to their car. Lucky for us, my buddy took a cab ride to the train station and left their car in the parking lot. Unlucky for me their car is a stick shift! "Fuck! I knew not learning how to drive a stick shift was going to come back to bite me on the ass one day."

So we made it down to the car and her pain was obviously unbearable at this point. Since she called me all those new names after asking about her hair there was no way I was going to tell her I did not know how to drive a stick shift. We got in the car, she was still crying and hunched over and I was thinking about shedding some tears myself. I was honestly afraid of what this woman would do to me if I didn't get this car started and moving soon. Their car is the size of a golf cart by the way and falling apart. I am responsible for breaking the passenger side door. A little over a month ago we went to the grocery mart and I went to open the door ripping the handle off accidentally and forever making it so that the passenger door had to be opened on the inside.

So, I knew I had about two tries to start this fucking car before she realized something was wrong with me and not the car. My stick shift driving lessons consist of three people. The first would be my father. We tried it maybe one hour in some parking lot when I was 15 years old. I barely remember the experience but I remember the look on my dads face which said something like..."Hmmmm, is this really my kid?" The second time took place in Montana a little over a year and a half ago with my friend Sara, we were in the backwoods somewhere and she decided to give me the wheel and I did pretty good. I felt like a small child whose mother was "oh so proud" of them but it worked up my confidence. The third time was with Danielle's Toyota (I think it was a Toyota) that she owned for few month's. This thing was a car and that's it. It could do nothing else but move. This car is responsible for the hottest road trip I have ever taken in my life. A little tip for those of you planning on driving from Oregon to Montana in the summer..."make sure your car has air-conditioning!" It was so hot in that car I started speaking Swahili!

Anyways, I took all of these experiences and I put it into last night. She needed me and I needed to come through. Not only did I get that bad boy started the first time but I reversed without stalling and got us to the hospital without incident. Unfortunately for me I parked the car on a down slope that needed to be backed out of to leave.

We got to the hospital emergency room and explained what was going on. My friend called to see if everything was okay and since his Korean is good he talked to the nurse and the doctor. She got some blood taken, they took some x-rays (I'm not sure why?) and then they gave her some medication for the pain and brought us both back to a room with two hospital beds in it. It was at this point I realized we were going to be here for a while. I didn't think to bring a book or even my ipod. The drugs must have kicked in pretty quick with her because that thick ass Southern accent was slurring a bit and her tear subsided some. She still looked like she was in pain but more manageable pain. She had been holding my hand for most of the night and finally let go about half an hour after taking the drugs.

Lucky for me my hand had been conditioned for extreme pressures by my dad. At a young age my dad thought it was funny to shake my brothers and my hand as hard as he could rolling the bones in our hands against themselves in the process. I'd be lying if I said I don't now find myself doing this to young children. The cycle continues!

So she let go of my hand and we talked. We talked and we talked and we talked. The whole time I thought for sure she was going to close her eyes and fall asleep but it never happened. We just talked all night and waited for the green light to leave. When you have someone who is in so much pain ask you if you are alright then you know somethings wrong. She kept asking me if I was okay and told me that I seemed "hurt" lately. I told her I was fine, made a well placed joke and then tried to change the subject but her southern ass was having none of it. I don't know if it was because she was high or what but she called me out pretty good. She told me that she looks at me when I don't realize it sometimes and she can tell that I'm "heart-sick". Even when I'm laughing. Then she made this killer statement to me. She said "I may have scar tissue on my fallopian tubes but I think you have scar tissue around your heart." I gave her a friendly "shut up" and "go to bed" and she just smiled and finally closed her eyes. I don't really think she went to sleep I think she was just giving me space to think.

We got back to the apartments around 7am this morning and I went back to sleep. I woke up a little while ago and felt the need to write so that's what I'm doing. It's Thanksgiving day here in Korea and I have a lot to be thankful for. I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving day and weekend. Be safe and have fun.