Little Old Lady Train

My last delivery was called in at 4:45pm and was, as is so often the case, for Napa. I'm not sure what the deal is, but they don't like to have me drive out there until after I'm getting ready to go home. I would move to Napa but I'm sure if I did I'd get deliveries to San Francisco at 4:45pm.

While I was waiting for the nursing staff to get the patient out of bed so I could replace her mattress, some white haired old ladies came creeping down the hall in their wheelchairs. They were just inches from each other, and in a perfect single-file line. It looked like the world's slowest steam engine, their little white heads like puffs of smoke. As they tectonically passed I smiled and said hello to the lead lady. She cheerily returned my hello.

While I was setting up the mattress they collected at the end of the hallway around another lady who was taking a nap in her wheelchair. They got a little clogged down there and tensions started to rise as they tried to come back the way they came. One lady was trying to back her chair up but kept running into the sleeping lady, who had chosen the center of the hall as an ideal napping point.

The clinking of wheelchairs carried on while they tried to sort themselves out, and a little argument broke out.

Little Old Lady 1: You can't back up, Rose. You keep running in to Edith.
LOL 2: Well for heaven's sake. Whey doesn't she move.
LOL 1: Because she's asleep.
LOL 2: Ask that young man over there (I believe they were referring to me) to move her.
LOL 1: I'm not asking him to move her. He doesn't work here. Why don't you just turn around?
LOL 2: Why don't you shut up?
LOL 1: Why don't YOU shut up?
LOL 2: You shut your mouth!
LOL 1: Don't you say another word to me!

I did my best to pretend that I didn't hear any of this. My policy is to have as little contact with patients as I can, and I want any contact I have to be really superficial. Something along the lines of "sure is raining out there." I certainly don't want to go around breaking up little old lady wheelchair brawls.

While I went and got my paperwork signed, they must have sorted things out. They came back down the hall, slow as can be, and in the same single file line in which they arrived. As the lady in engine position passed me by, I smiled and said hello, and she cheerily said hello back. LOLWB successfully averted.