Thanks to my years of playing football and running my fair share of marathons, I’ve finally accepted that I’ve got a pretty roughed-up right knee. As these things go, my doctor scheduled me for an MRI at Seattle Grace Hospital (or I guess Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital – wait, Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital now), which I’d never been to before.
It all felt pretty standard: get whisked to a room with a big machine, lie down for a little while, and you’re out the door in an hour. Not much to report on I suppose, at least aside from the bomb threat. Well, not so much a bomb threat than an actual bomb being in the building; I was on my way to the MRI when a cart carrying what certainly looked like a makeshift bomb was wheeled past me and multiple doctors had their hands on it – in it maybe? The most I could make out from the people rushing by was someone yelling, “Meredith, I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself!”
“What was that?” I asked the technician walking me to the room.
“Oh, nothing,” she said.
Fair enough, I guess. I was led to an area near the MRI room where I would change my clothes. As I was putting them in the locker given to me, I heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots somewhere within the hospital. Naturally, I dove right to the ground and crawled to the front desk, inch by terrifying inch.
“Did you hear that?!” I scream-whispered to the two women at the front desk, who hadn’t moved despite the commotion that could still be heard off in the distance.
“What, the gunshots?” one of them replied. “Yeah.”
I can’t say that my fears were entirely assuaged by their calm demeanor, but the gunshots and screams did subside after a few minutes, so I carefully retreated back to the MRI machine where the technician was happily waiting for me.
And as I lay in the contraption with the imaging being done on my knee, I heard the door to the room swing open and the slightly muted laughter of both a man and a woman, as if they were trying to suppress their glee.
As I tried to crane my neck to see behind me, I could make out what certainly appeared to be two rapidly disrobing bodies shuffling about the room. I swear I heard the beginning symphony of shushed sex noises, a screeching chair on the linoleum floor, and medical supplies being quickly swiped off a counter, strewn all over the floor.
“Someone’s in here,” the female voice giggle-whispered.
“Makes it even hotter, don’t you think?” the male voice replied.
I thought about saying something, but wasn’t sure if this was part of the typical MRI protocol. Ultimately, I stayed still and silent in the machine as instructed by the imaging technician.
Once the procedure was complete, the technician re-entered the room, and I as I stepped over the medical supplies still lying all over the floor, I thought better of calling attention to it, as she certainly didn’t seem bothered by it. Was that a used condom I saw?
As I made my way out of the hospital, noticing that I was surrounded by the most objectively attractive people on the planet, all seemingly flirting with each other, I realized I hadn’t even been in a hospital in decades, not since I was a kid back in Houston. Nobody seemed to be discussing the bomb situation or the active shooter – I saw no police presence whatsoever – and when I took a wrong turn around a corner by accident on my way out, I saw two other surgeons undressing each other as the door to a supply closet was closing.
Maybe this is just par for the course in our hospital system these days. I really don’t have anything bad to say about the experience; my results even came back in a timely fashion despite the fact that someone drove a fire truck through the front lobby of the building not long after I left for home.