No Soup for You

I had spent  what seemed like hours at the beck and call of an elderly couple.  The wife was being treated for vague complaints; the husband was feisty, and was not happy to be in the ER.  He followed me out of the room EVERY TIME to ask another question or to make another demand / request.  There were  several "one more thing to tell the doctor" and "I remembered something else".  I had  toileted, watered, warm blanketed, repositioned, explained the monitor, apologized for the tightness of the blood pressure cuff, and given them 3 vomit sacks (although she was not, in fact, vomiting).  When he wasn't hounding me, the husband was on the phone loudly proclaiming to his friends / neighbors / family / distant cousins how much time had elapsed since they had entered the ER.

It was the middle of the afternoon although they had only been in the department for  two hours.  Another exhausting Q and A session concluded thus:

Husband (snippy): "So, are you going to be serving us dinner?"
Me (apologetically):  "Oh, no; I'm sorry, we don't have any food service here, I'm sure I explained that"
Husband (more snippy than before):  "I was really just wondering if we were going to be here long enough to require dinner"
Me (innocently):  "Yes sir, I understand sarcasm".