Today I carried a birthday cake through the emergency room.
The journey was an exercise in contrasts. It wasn’t that the ER was filled with its expected grief. There was no blood. There were no weeping family members waiting word on a heart attack or a car wreck. There was no small child cradling a twisted broken arm. No, this ER is the place that has replaced the family doctor, because most family doctors require the proper credentials for appointment admittance – your insurance card. This ER will see you with or without a card. This doesn’t mean that you’ll get treated, it just means that you will be seen.
And into the milieu I walk, holding the cake comprised of organic, vegan, cruelty-free ingredients bought at the local natural food store. Its been baked in my convection oven; an oven that costs as much as some computers. The cake is covered in plastic wrap and braced with four tooth picks to make sure the frosting doesn’t get smudged from home to office.
And we walk by, that cake and I, through the sweaty sickness that fills the place by noon. The overly stretched bodies from too much fast food, panting with shortness of breath. The pink-eyed children and those with green drippy noses. The moms with one, two, three toddlers all demanding a piece of the cheese-n-cracker combo from the vending machine. CNN blasts through the cries of babies, and the TV speaker pours the news into the room that President Bush has veto increased health care funding for children of the working poor.
And I walk with a cake that I cannot tell you how much it cost to bake. We walk.
