How the other half lives

For the past couple of years my parents have been taking turns playing a game, a game called "Let's Go to the Emergency Room and Throw Our Adult Children into a Fit of Anxiety."

This time, it was my father's turn to play the game. A week in the hospital, a few days in rehab.

"How are things going?" I asked.

Asking this question is risky, because although you do want to know how they are doing, you are really hoping to receive the Preferred Answer ("This place is great! Everyone is so nice. There's always so much going on. I never had better food in my life. My roommate has become my best friend. I don't want to go home"). But you never receive the Preferred Answer, although my mother does tend to praise the food in these establishments, mainly because she did not have to cook it.

"No one wants to help me," my father reported. "I have to do everything myself."

"I'm sure the staff is really busy," I said.

He scoffed at this. "Nah, I don't see how they can be," he said. If they are not busy helping him, they are not busy.

"You're in rehab, Dad, not a five-star hotel. They want you to do things for yourself so you can get better and go home."

He grunted, refusing to believe that the staff might have his best interests at heart.

He lowered his voice, although most everyone around him is hard of hearing. "I saw where the rich people live," he said conspiratorially.

"The rich people?"

"Yeah, in the assisted living wing. The rooms there are like mansions! Not closets like we have here. Plus I can tell they're rich because of the wheelchairs."

"The wheelchairs?" I said.

"Yeah. Their wheelchairs are Cadillacs," he said. "People over where I am just have your basic Chevy."

I pictured my father in his basic Chevy wheelchair, spying on the rich residents in assisted living with their Cadillacs and mansions.

"I bet they have the same food," I said, trying to think of something positive.

"Ha!" he said. "They probably get it catered from somewhere."

He was supposed to be there for a few weeks, but they said he was "independent" now and could go home. My father wanted to know what was for dinner once he got home.

"You're independent now," my mother said. "You can get the dinner."

Maybe the rehab place wasn't so bad after all. Even if he just had a Chevy wheelchair.