hi family! um, its been a while so here is a story. i wrote it for travel writing class. what do you think of it? any ideas for a title? pictures of pottery coming soon! okay, bye.

Here is the Plattsburg Emergency Room. Here are the little curtained cubicles. Here is Martin, my traveling companion, draped in a hospital gown. He looks better now and is texting someone, somewhere, probably a girl he likes. The use of cellular devices is strictly prohibited in the emergency room. We use our phones anyway because we have been waiting for hours and we are bored.
Here is the pile of year-old magazines that we scoured cover to cover. Did you know that the Dixie Chicks are making it big? Did you know that you can garnish your thanksgiving turkey with orange wedges for festive holiday flair? I hope I remember that for next November.
Here are wire racks of medical supplies surrounding Martin’s reclining bed. I steal band-aids for a rainy day, you know, in case someone slips.
Here is an instruction manual for the blood pressure gauge mounted on the wall, patented 1978. My blood pressure is 120 over 75; pretty perfect, I think.
Here comes Frank. He is our nurse. He’s dragging a machine on wheels. The wheels don’t work so it just bumps and swerves along. He straps a cuff around Martin’s skinny elbow and pushes buttons on the machine. It’s broken. He goes to get another one. I wonder if he knows about the blood pressure cuff on the wall. His tattoos are beautiful and I tell him so. He smiles, once.
There is no urgency in this emergency room. The medical technicians stroll down the bright, eternal hallways. The nurses congregate at the coffee urn, like gazelles at a watering hole, except they’re not all so skinny.
On the other side of the paisley curtain, I hear coughing. Cough, cough, cough, hack, hem, cough. Frank goes to check on big Mr. Cough. He is cold. He feels burning inside his bones. Could he have another blanket please? Below the curtain, I see shoes, soft, little-old-lady shoes. Mr. Cough has a visitor? His wife? No, it’s his mother. He should take better care of himself, exercise, eat better. But it’s hard at the shelter: it’s so cold, he’s gotta eat all the time to stay warm. It’s hard, he says. She knows, she says. Here is a long, quiet pause.
Do you know any vengeful Scottish kings? she asks. I imagine they are performers in a renaissance fair. She serves mutton and ale to rude guests. He jousts. They are part of the modern Celtic revival: I read about it in the waiting room’s National Geographic, May 1994.
Then she asks a seven letter word for Buddhist enlightenmen?. She says ‘Buddhist’ like boooh-dust. Now I am jealous because they have a crossword puzzle. That would be a nice way to pass the time. Mr. Cough farts, loudly. Ewww, I look at Martin. Martin rolls his eyes and begins another text message. Mr. Cough and his mother start talking about chili. She was eating a bowl of his father’s famous chili when she got the call from the hospital.
Martin is hungry. He hasn’t eaten since, since… I go to find the cafeteria. Its past the ambulance entrance, left at the I.C.U., right at the vending machines, and down the elevator to the ground floor. You can’t miss it from there. I don’t make it past the vending machines. All the walking and talk about a chili makes me hungry too. I see cupcakes, hostess cupcakes, and I have just enough change.
Down the elevator, I find the sandwich man. Gosh he is friendly. Red onions is good medicine, he says. Martin wolfs down the good medicine with turkey and cheese, between slices of floppy white bread. I scarf down my two hostess cupcakes, two too many. Now I fit in because I feel sick too. The doctor will see us now.
Here comes the doctor. He looks very important in his white lab coat and tie. The doctor trips on a bag strap and looks embarrassed for one second. Martin and my bags are under the bed. They are packed with guidebooks and going-out clothes for spring break. I thought I did a good job getting them out of the way, but not good enough, I guess.
The doctor nods and hmmms while Martin talks about what happened, his symptoms, how he's feeling much better now. He prescribes some pills and asks what brings us to Plattsburg?. The Greyhound bus brings us, we are going to Montreal for spring break. Montreal, how nice, have you ever been? No, we haven’t. Well, you’ve got to see this and don’t miss that. Okay, thanks doctor. Martin fills out some paperwork and we are free to go.
Here is the button that opens the ER doors from the inside-out. Here is the big-black-Plattsburg-parking-lot night. Here comes our taxi. We drive by McDonalds, JC Penny and Home Depot to a little strip mall. It is not so shiny or new. Here is the Greyhound Bus Station. It is closed. Here is the schedule taped to the window, Albany to Montreal. There is a bus at 12:35am. It is 8:02pm. We hope it comes. We hope there are open seats and they let us on without tickets. We hope they let us through at the border. We hope we don’t freeze waiting here. We don’t. We order a pizza to the bus station. The delivery boy is cute and wears his hood up like an overgrown gnome. Pizza is hot and gooey, and the bus comes, and we get on. Goodbye Plattsburg.
Here is the Canadian border. Here is a border guard. Is he bald or has he shaved his head? It is hard to say. He barks at Martin because he only has driver's liscence, no passport. He would like us to take Canada seriously. We do and he lets us across.
Here is Canada. The highway overpasses are low and the snow banks are high. I fall asleep and wake up in Montreal.