Thank Goodness My Family Doesn't Need To Deal With Surgery Too Often

It's not so much that my trip from school to home via bus, train and foot took me over four and a half hours yesterday (when it would take just an hour and half by car), but a license would be really handy when I need to go to the pharmacy post-haste to get my dad his medication because no one else in my family bothered to get it last night when he came home from the hospital. So I walked, twenty-five minutes there, twenty minutes back, and thought of how it would have taken all of three minutes to drive. It's not so much about saving me time and hassle, but about getting someone their painkillers when they need them.

I don't know what horrifies me more, the fact that neither my mum nor my brother got his prescriptions filled when they were fully capable of doing so (apparently my mum wanted to get home right away to start dinner), or the fact that my dad took a bus to the hospital alone, stayed there for three days and two nights alone, or the fact that he went without food or drink for twenty-seven hours while waiting eight for his procedure, or that when I called home to see how he/things was/were, neither mum nor brother knew the name of the hospital or the phone number. They hadn't spoken to him and had no idea what was going on. They said that he'd call home when he was ready to leave. The one piece of information they knew, the intersection of the place, I took and within minutes of using handy internet resources, I was on the phone with my dad and a nurse to find out what the goddamn was taking so long. My family. I don't get them.

When I came back from the pharmacy this afternoon, I surprised myself when I realized that I knew how to say "painkillers" in Cantonese. I wish I knew how to say all sorts of other things like, "Lonely" and "Care" and "Why don't you?". I leave to go back to the Loo tomorrow morning and can't imagine what it's going to be like for him to be alone in the house for four weeks. Who's going to make him noodles and tea and makes sure he takes his medication? Moreover, who else is he going to talk to about vaginal hygiene when he's bored? He's fine though. Probably doing better than me in some respects.
3:00 pm