Rick was awaiting his blood drawing for his PT scan to see if he still had cancer. The nurse from the chemo center could not do this, much to his irritation. He did talk her into leaving the port in as he was getting sick of being restuck.
Seated at beyond proper physical distance from the other patients, who had bigger worries that a phony pandemic [downgraded to an epidemic 13-months earlier, but still called a pandemic] Rick decided to get a cup of coffee. There he sat, sipping his coffee, reading, with his mask on his chin, when a finger began tapping the table next to him, '”Sir, sir, sir!”
He looked up and a nurse made a motion that he had to pull his mask up. Rather than drink through the mask, Rick said, “I am drinking my coffee. I'll pull up the mask when I'm done.”
Rick continued sipping and reading until another nurse tapped the table and said, “Sir, sir, sir! We are getting complaints that you are unmasked.”
Rick said, in his classically direct style, which might suit him as a candidate for an ambassadorial post to North Korea, stated, “That is a lie. No one has moved from their seats to complain. I am properly social distanced and I am drinking my coffee. We fucking have cancer here—do you think we care about your fake fucking disease? As soon as I am done with my coffee, I will mask up.”
A few moments later, the supervising nurse approaches Rick with the underling nurse hovering in the background and begins gaslighting him about the complaints from the dying people around him that he is not doing the right thing in the fight against the non-existent pandemic.
Rick stood up without finishing his coffee, repeated his previous points and said, “You know what—I'm sick of you people and your bullshit. This is bullshit and lies—nothing more. I'm done, I'm out of here.”
“But, Sir,” said the supervising nurse, “you can't leave with the port in your arm. We still have to draw your blood. This is your last appointment.”
“I don't care. I'm done. This is bullshit. Take it out.”
“Sir, we cannot do that, not here. Please, mask up and wait. You are next in line. What if we get you your own waiting room?”
“Look, after what I went through, you people are trying to tell me that this thing will kill me, and I can't walk, even though I walked in here, and that your fake fucking disease is going to use me to infect all of these people with some media bullshit that I don't have! Fuck this place—I'm out of here!”
And Rick pulled the plug, just rips out the port and blood shoots on the nurse and he puts his finger on the vein to maintain pressure until the blood coagulates...
“Oh my God, sir, sir...”
[“Jimmy, don't ever let them tell you you cant rip out your I.V. It comes right out with a little bit of blood.”]
And the gaggle of nanny drones take Rick right into an empty room and he is soon attended to by a female doctor who says, “I know how you feel. I'm in the position of having to explain masks to my son, but...”
“But,” Rick says, “you will lose your funding if you don't obey and don't enforce the phony mask rules.”
“Yes, thank you for understanding.”
So, Rick, still clear of cancer after his first checkup since being cleared the first time, is back to the gym every day. As I worked in the yard he asked me if there was anything he could get me and I said, “Yeah, diet Gatorade.”
“Is Powerade okay, it's got b-vitamins in it?”
“Yes sir.”
That set up the very next episode in Rick's post cancer life as he faces his sixth decade of being hated for the crime of being born with both a penis and a pale face.
