As our series continues, we find…

Garth’s vision came back to him slowly.  There was still a lot of white around his peripheral field of view, but the numb tingling and anger had mostly faded.  Then, he realized he was not vertical, but horizontal.  Frappé’s face looked down on him anxiously, and at the same time he noticed her, he also became aware that the whiteness in his vision was curtains, loosely billowing on either side of him.

“What the…” he sputtered.  “Wha… what’s going on?” he asked, in a voice so weak it surprised him.

“Just relax, dear.”  Frappé reassured him.  “Dr. Hollingsworth says you’ll be okay, if you just don’t get too stressed out for the next while, okay?”

“Where am I?” he questioned.

“At the hospital, dear.” she gently answered.  Over the next few minutes, Frappé went on to explain that Garth had not had one of his usual stressed-out rages, but a stress-induced, though relatively mild, blackout and nervous collapse.  Fortunately, her call to 911 had paged an ambulance that was passing by only blocks away, and he was whisked off to the hospital in very short order.

Part of his mind was thankful to be alive; another part of his awareness started calculating some of the cold hard realities of his situation.  He knew the provincial medical insurance was not going to cover all of the hospital stay he was going to need, and he sure didn’t want to be booted out of the hospital early due to some &$%#@! government’s cutback programs.  Then he remembered the special insurance policy they’d taken out a few years ago to cover eventualities such as this.

He decided to try to appear magnanimous.  “Frap” he murmured.  “Don’t worry… the ExtraMed Insurance policy’ll take care of everything.  Don’t look so worried…”

“S-S-Sweetie…”  she stammered.  :”There’s something you should know about that.”

“Yeah, what?” he inquired, a squint creeping in around the corners of his eyes.

“We-l-ll… ” she paused, then took a deep breath and continued nervously.  “That, um, that policy…. it, er…., well, we umm, cashed it out to pay for that third-last redecorating job about 6 months ago…..”

“Gggg-gg-gg-uuuhhh…” choked Garth.  “Aaarrhhhhh…hhhhh…hhhh”.    In spite of several ECG wires, two intravenous tubes, a wrist restraint, a nasal aspirator tube and his somewhat feeble condition, he was surprisingly quick to lunge at Frappé, fingers trying to grab her neck.  He missed, she jumped back in fear, and hospital supplies scattered in all directions.  As she called out for help, and doctors and nurses came running, Garth clutched and swung at her from his bed.  A restraint that encircled his waist had kept him pretty well secured in the bed, but as his eyes narrowed and he glared at Frappé, she knew that she was going to have to give him a really long cooling-off period this time.  The events of the past few hours had so distracted her too, that she’d forgotten about her mother’s visit scheduled for that afternoon.