"You Speak English Well."

I often am reminded that I am not viewed as an everyday ordinary American at the most inopportune times. I abruptly got strep throat Monday evening, which really put an emergency break on all my activities, jobs, work out schedules, and other events on my calendar for the week. I woke up early Thursday morning at 3:30 am with unbearable head and neck pain. (For you medical people: on a scale of 0 to 10. It was an eight.)

I couldn’t pick my head up off the pillow without excruciating throbbing pain. I took Advil and told myself not to be a little sissy baby about it, but I could no longer stand it and worried that it may be something else going on instead of the run of the mill strep throat.

I called my brother and he drove me to the ER. I work nights in the hospital and I didn’t realize how goddamn bright the hospital is unless you are so sick you can’t open your eyes to the ever calming and soothing fluorescent lights.

I hung on to the check-in counter with my elbows, eyes closed, hair matted with grease, sweat, and sick nasty shit that usually gets washed away (but I've been too weak to stand in the shower the past three days). Little did I know that I was undergoing a citizenship test right there.

Registration lady (R.L.):
Your name?

Me:
Imelda Cuison.

R.L.:
Okay.

(Pause)

Is that Cush-in. Or Cuss-in.

Me:
It’s Quee- sawhn.

R.L.:
(Laughs)

Quee-sawhn?

(Laughs)

Okay. Sure.

She went on to ask me a number of interesting and intriguing questions about where I live, where I work, my occupation, my phone number, my work phone number… Basic questions when you check in to the ER.

Before she let me go to sit back down in one of the stained chairs in the waiting room, she commented nonchalantly, “You speak English well.”

I opened my eyes and looked up through the window.

Me:
I’m an American citizen.

R.L.:
What state were you born in?

Me:
Connecticut.

R.L.:
Okay. That will be all. Thank-you.

I left five hours later after Rocephin IV, NS at 75 cc/hr, Decadron IV push, Dilaudid IV push, Zofran IV push , CT scan of the head a neck with and without contrast, dry heaving into an emesis basin, Phenergan IV push, Phenergan IV push again, a diagnosis of tonsillitis, and a reminder that no matter where I was born, what I do, who I truly am, how much education I attain, or how many accomplishments I achieve…

I will always be an outsider in this great American land.

Thank-you, registration lady. I almost done well forgot what I learned from all these here years living in the U.S. of A.