Still "in Hospital" . . .

. . . as the English say (they're so cute). Plan was to street me today, but now my hematocrit levels are low, so I'm looking at another couple days On the Ward. I don't feel like my hematocrit levels are low, and I suspect there's some bloodworking ledgerdemain going down, just to keep me around: the national news crews have descended, and the novelty of it hasn't yet worn off on the hospital staff.

(You wouldn't believe how well some of these nurses clean up, suddenly, with Anderson Cooper around. Sure makes my days here a lot nicer. That Barbara who works the early morning shift? Yesterday you could have got a staph infection from her fingernails alone. Now she comes in a dead ringer for Gina Gershon.)

Anyway, I'm on the laptop now. No Internet, because there aren't any Ethernet jacks in the rooms, and they can't do wireless: would interfere with all the machines, they say. I had PePe run a longline from the jacks at the nurse's station — they have a whole cluster of computers there — but of course some lady tripped over it and reopened some wound or other, and he got a talking-to for it. So I'm typing up this post offline, for somebody on the Staff to publish later.

Still no interviews with the press. I'll probably give a statement on the way out the door.

I've got a roommate now. Real talker, this guy. Says he names cars for a living. Says he's the hot car-name guy in the industry, and Toyota just hired him away from Kia. I asked him what cars he named at Kia. He said, "all of them." I got the impression he was full of shit, and I asked him for specific names. He paused for a minute and said, "well, the Kia Boysenberry, for one . . ."

Turns out he is full of shit, and I talked Frankie Big Cheese into doctoring up the guy's medical records to conform to my diagnosis. A minute ago Gina wheeled him off to have somebody "disimpact his bowel." Ha ha ha.

I tell you, B/S, Frankie's not half-bad at forgery — medical forgery, especially. It's like he knows all the notations and abbreviations. A potentially very useful talent, I should think. Already useful, don't get me wrong, but I figure a crack medical forger is good for more than just buying me ten minutes of peace to write a blog post.

Maybe I'll get him to write me a prescription for a chocolate shake. I've got a craving.