The call came late yesterday afternoon. Could I come over to hospital and help get some nurses home with my four wheel drive?I was being given a shot at redemption after my initial volunteer service failed.
Between the hours of 5:30 and 8:30 PM I ferried Ms. Janet, Ms. O and Ms Lee to their homes in Ellicott City and Columbia. The nurses told me that the hospital was a little jammed with patients who were ready to be discharged yet unable to leave because they couldn’t get picked up. Meanwhile new patients continued to flow in.
I got a short break between my 6:00 assignment and the end of the nursing shift at 7:00 PM so I dropped into Clyde’s for a burger. The bar was full but there were plenty of open tables in the restaurant. I sat at the bar with Bill McGregor, the football coach of DeMatha High School in Hyattsville. He lives in Ellicott City and came over to Clyde’s to cure his cabin fever.
“How are the roads?” he asked.
My stock answer is that the roads are passable but far from safe. You could easily be tooling down the road and without warning the two lanes of traffic become one. Ice is a problem too as well as the fact that at most intersections your visibility of oncoming traffic is blocked by mounds of piled up snow.
I laughed and told him that a teenager would probably say the roads were fine but an old dog like me urges caution.
