Emergencies

I picked up the phone on Wednesday night to noise. People were shouting. People were having rather frantic conversations. Sudden rattling noises raced past the other end of the phone. And then Mum spoke.
“Hello?” she enquired, rather than greeted.
“Hello?” I enquired back, almost shouting over the noise in the background.
“Hold on” Mum said. “Michael?”
“Yes, it’s me, Mum, where are you?” I asked as the noise around my Mum on the other end of line seemed to grow loud again and then, once more, lessen back down into various conversations in the background, phone’s ringing in the room behind her.
“Where are you Mum?” I asked, almost impatiently, before I heard the noise.
An ambulance rang out in the background. A brief, short scream of a few seconds. Enough to make me panic.
“Where are you Mum?” I almost shouted, near panic, the worst of situations running through my mind. It had only been three weeks since my Dad’s heart attack. You’d often hear of people having mild heart attacks before a big one later on, further on down the line.
“Mum?!”
“What was Archie’s second name?” Mum asked.
“What?” I frowned down the phone at her, as the frantic conversations carried on behind her.
“Archie’s second name, what was it?” Mum asked, referring to a previous boss I’d had, an ancient old fella that ran the Auldhouse Arms, an old pub where I used to work behind the bar, in my art school days.
“Where are you?”, I asked again in frustration. “Where’s Dad?”.
“He’s in the conservatory talking to one of the guys from his work” Mum replied.
The conservatory?
Once more, frowning down the phone, I asked perplexed, “what’s all that noise in the background?”
“The noise?” Mum replied and then seemed to cotton on to the noise going on around her. “Oh, I’m watching ER”
“ER?” I huffed as my shoulders relaxed around my neck.
“Yeah, it’s on Sky” she replied.
“That finished ages ago!” I sighed exasperatedly after a few moments of pulling myself together again. Has she not had enough hospital dramas recently, I thought? And even if she hasn’t surely she could be watching a little more current hospital dramas such as Greys Anatomy, House, Holby City or Casualty even?
Mum still struggles with that giant, HD, television they’ve got. One day she spent a whole morning simply trying to turn it on before giving up and phoning Kenny, interrupting him at work.
The other day I received an emergency phonecall from Ka in work. The Virgin tv service had crashed again. I’m still not sure, to this day, what I was supposed to have done to our television from my desk at work but I done my utmost best. I told Ka to phone Virgin. Only this morning I was sitting eating my weetabix, looking forward to watching some gypsies, sorry, travellers getting chucked off some illegally pilfered land, when the tv went black.
The virgin service had went capoot once more. Being at home this time, I went straight to the phone and voiced a hearty complaint to the Indian women on the 150 number. She apologised and booked a repairman for Sunday.
“Sunday?”, I said. “Sunday?” A little louder, causing Ka to wake up in the bedroom. “This is ridiculous!”. Rather than be impressed that Virgin tv repairmen did not partake in the day of rest, I was rather annoyed that we’d have to spend the majority of our weekend without television. Nothing could be done though, and I had to go to work without my morning news, although, fortunately, I didn’t miss anything on the Dale farm front thanks to another Court ruling. The Virgin lady later called and informed us it was a regional fault and our television would be back by five o’clock in the evening, so we were able to watch QI and Big Brother tonight (two different ends of the television spectrum there!).
“Young” I sigh, my ears growing accustomed to the medical babble in the background. “His name was Young” I almost hang up on Mum with a roll of the eyes, once I finally relax.
Mum obviously still doesn’t know how to operate the volume control properly as the noises of the ambulances and doctors of ER fill the living room, while she fiddles over her jigsaw on the coffee table, the handset of their phone at her ear.
“Ah, that was it, Young” she nods over the phone. “You’re Dad wanted to know as Bill’s, (or whatever his name was), Mum knew him”.
“That’s good” I say. “How are you?”. Now that she had phoned and successfully disturbed me, I thought I may as well make polite conversation.
“Fine, fine” she replied, a little distant, her attention now obviously back to watching ER which is probably where it mostly remained until the end of the conversation.
Having answered my question and fulfilling my use, I let her get back to her hospital drama and I back to The Fades, on BBC three. A little less ordinary than ER but, on some levels, not as uncomfortable.