To Arms

To Arms
Thursday was a long and stressful day. I knew that it was going to be a long day, but the stressfull part unfolded during the day. My friend asked me to accompany her to Ruby Hospital in Morgantoen, West Virginia. It is about an hour drive. She usually has a service animal, but the service animal can’t drive, so she has me to go along in case she doesn’t fell well enough to drive back home.
The trek started out from her house. I drove over there. I was early as usual. That was one of my Father E. Carl Beck’s commandments, “Be early of you’re late.” We left her house at 11 o’clock am. About fifteen minutes into the drive, she figured out that she was leaving home too early. She recalled the time of her appointments and we were leaving an hour earlier than we needed to leave. There was no need to return to her house and we continued on our way.She did want to leave a little bit early because of road construction in Connellsville and near Morgantown, but not that early.
The trip was after the morning rush hour. Traffic was light and we arrived at the hospital just a few minutes less than an hour. (PS When we left home gasoline was $3.69 a gallon and in Morgantown gasoline was $2.72 a gallon. Something is really fishy here. Could it be the “much higher” gas tax in Pennsylvania?)
So we arrive at the hospitaal and are directed to the srea for her first test. NO problems. Actually they took he in aboout half an hoourearliier that her appointment. And that made the wait time for her second test much longer.
The area for her second test had signs directing us to that area. Several places along the corridor were signs advising “No Weapons.” I remembered that I was carrying my pistol in my pocket. I usually keep it there and had forgotten about it. On the way into the area, I mentioned it to the receptionist. She didn’t seem alarmed and I went in, sat down, and began to read my book. Fifteen minutes later I looked up to see three uniformed security guards. One asked me to step into the hallway to talk. They asked that I accompany them to the emergency department to relinquich my weapon until we were leaving. They wore pistols at their sides and were heavily armed. I wasn’t going to argue. It was an odd feeling being escorted down several hallways. People along the way were looking and wondering what had I done to have three guards with me.
When my friend’s test was over, we left after stopping to collect my pistol only stopping for a meal on the way home. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was now 6 pm.