Diary of a Clown/Wake up! Wake up!

Wake Up! Wake up!

Here’s another Hospital story for you…I was to do a “Get Well” Pink Gorilla Gram in another one of the huge NYC Hospitals.

Aside from walking 10 minutes until I find my recipient, and tracking him or her down, another hard part is explaining yourself to the nurses and orderlies. The first thing I do when I get there is make sure I can find someone who looks like they have a brain in there head. I’ve had a couple of cases where the workers (mostly Foreign) would walk away from me and go immediately over to the patient and say something like…”Mr. Brown! There’s a woman here who is going to dress up in a costume and sing to you” “Is that ok?” Even if they say yes, my cover is already blown. If it gets back to the sender that I revealed myself before the surprise they would (and have) ask for there money back.

This particular Telegram specified that if the recipient isn’t in his room to leave the balloons by his bed which I started to do when I discovered he wasn’t there. Unfortunately, when telling one orderly why I was there, it had caused (within minutes) something like 20 workers to come out of no where and gather around in this man’s room! I think I even remember them making an announcement over the PA system. When I tried just leaving the balloons, I heard…”No! No! He will come any minute” “Stay! Stay”! Oh, I forgot to mention that a few minutes earlier that I over heard one of the nurses on the phone giving the results of his operation. “Mr. Abrams has just come out of his operation and has a blood loss of (I think she said) 30 percent and is still under anesthesia”.

At this point, there was no escaping the man’s room. After all, not only was I a free show, but an excuse for them to get out of working. This was it! I was now there Prisoner, or so it felt!
After a few minutes of listening to the workers explain why I was there in a few different languages, a very unconscious Mr. Abrams was wheeled into this roomful of giggling workers all pushing there way towards him to ensure they wouldn’t miss anything. When I saw he was unconscious, I just figured someone would step in and tell me to leave.
Quite the contrary, one of the Orderlies abruptly starts clapping her hands real loud in his face! “Mr. Abrams! Mr. Abrams!” “Wake up! Wake up!” After like the fifth attempt, Mr. Abrams finally opened up his eyes, looking directly up at me in all of my pink furriness as I said…”Hey Mr. Abrams, you must be hallucinating! You’re seeing a Pink Gorilla!” I hate to say it, but he then closed his eyes and hopefully opened them later! I want to make it to Heaven when it’s my time!