The hospital

My father, who is quite elderly, went to the hospital to have a procedure.  He had  not been making sense for a while, and kept falling asleep and falling off chairs, so they decided he needed a pacemaker.  He was okay with it.  But they made him wait all day, fasting, as they do in New Jersey, and he refused to go to the operating room.  By this time, he believed he was in a hotel, and a damn poor one at that, and asked my stepmother to give him $10 to take a taxi home.

So it was arranged that he would have the procedure under general anesthesia the next day.  His wife signed the permission and they pumped him full of valium and God knows what else.  The pacemaker was inserted. 

When the anesthesia wore off, he  demanded to be discharged but they would not release him until he had been rational for 24 hours.  This made him even crazier.  He does not do well with hospitals.  The last time he had had general anesthesia he had a bad reaction and  was convinced that the man in the next bed was a Mafioso bent on killing him, despite reassurance to the contrary.

Well, they finally released him.  But meanwhile the phone lines between Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California were burning up, and the e-mails were flying.  I was chosen by popular acclaim to go to NJ and discover what the hell is going on, as  the nearest relative geographically.  So I am putting my investigative shoes on and off I go.