"Flashback - Episode 2. Fear and Anxiety in Las Vegas continued" Wednesday, June 16th:
Fortunately two things conspired to save me from this gruesome fate. Matriarchal nurse No.1 and a business card that I found nestling in my wallet...from the Elvis impersonator and sometimes head of night time security at my hotel, Melissa Todd.
At this point my main concern was my state of dress, or undress to be precise. Shuffling slowly through a casino I could easily pass for a very tired and pissed customer after a long night on the town, if I had trousers and shoes. And with my arms folded across my chest, the track marks would barely be visible. There were only two ways I could think of to acquire the necessary clothing. Firstly find a washing line and steal them or, as you were forced to do at school if you had forgotten your gym kit, borrow from lost property. The first option was clearly not an option at 6:00am in the middle of Las Vegas and therefore it was going to have to be option two.
Having had my saline drip removed, or to put it another way, having had a patch of hair and the saline drip brutally removed from my arm, I broached the subject of my lack of clothing and the lost property solution, with matriarchal nurse No.1. A few minutes later she returned not with a soiled old pair of trousers recently cut off a vagrant with gangreous leg ulcers, but a neatly pressed pair of medical trousers of the type used in operating theatres. These were powder blue, not exactly a good colour for evening wear, and were size XL, which gave them a certain baggy, low crutch, hip hop look.
However, with "Property of Angelica, plant#33 Never remove from premises" neatly printed down the right leg, they did tend to shout out "hello, I've just escaped from a mental hospital...don't turn your back on me". I could also have done better on the shoes front given that they turned out to be more like socks with bits of rubber tread on the bottom - in fact they were socks with bits of rubber on the bottom. I was to be dressed like the permanently institutionalised and it would stand out a mile.
But, at the end of the day - or night, to be more accurate - I had clothes. None of them perfect, including my nihilistic t-shirt, but none the less, not bad for free at 6:00am in a strange city far, far from home.
And so to my second piece of good fortune - said business card from said Elvis impersonator. Perhaps Elvis could whisk me up to my room without me having to walk the 50 or so yards across the casino floor looking like a mental patient. It was worth a shout so I gave the card to matriarchal nurse No.1 and asked her to ask Elvis if the hotel could pick me up. The answer came back as a yes. I knew it would be yes because, as I have mentioned before, this is a litigious land and the near certainty that the hotel had served up my particular little dose of food poisoning weighed well in my favor.
Actually that's virtually a complete lie because, as my Chinese doctor had explained, it's very rare, although not unheard of, to have a high temperature with food poisoning. The probable culprit being a virulent stomach flu. However, he did not totally rule out food poisoning. Either way the hotel would be none the wiser...that's if matriarchal nurse No.1 hadn't mentioned it to Elvis on the phone...which was actually not a problem, because Nevada law is particularly clear on PHI, or Protected Health Information, and any disclosures by the hospital to the hotel would have enabled me to bring suit against the hospital...and my bet was that that could have been worth a few million quid.
Having been issued a little stack of prescriptions and told to take nothing but fluids for at least 24 hours, I dressed - if what I had to wear constituted dressing - and was wheeled into a little office...the accounts office! Money! Being a Brit, I had totally forgotten that none of this was free. I had wondered why my ambulance crew had been so keen to find my wallet in my bedroom before we left. I thought it was a security thing to make sure I was who I had claimed to be. Unfortunately I had not made a note of my travel insurance policy number nor who to contact in the USA to initiate a claim. Fortunately Mrs Accounts Lady believed that I had cover, but swiped $500 on a credit card...just in case, and that was for the ambulance alone.
Things where beginning to look a little brighter now. My temperature had been Tylanol'd into submission. The little white pills had made my urgent trips to the loo less urgent and less frequent. A jab had taken the edge of the nausia. And the roughly hewn monster white pills had apparently taken care of my electrolyte imbalance. I had a kind of pair of trousers and a kind of pair of shoes and my lift was on it's way to take me to my hotel bed on the 19th floor...next to the rollercoaster.
I had one worry left. The walk across the casino floor and how to get my prescriptions filled. Two, I had two worries left. The walk across the casino floor, how to get my prescriptions filled and where to get hold of large quantities of Gatorade. Three, three, I had three worries left...
The solution to the last two problems came in the shape of Walgreens 24 hour pharmacy, on the Strip opposite my hotel. My hotel security guard, come driver, rather hesitantly agreed to stop, I think more at the though of being asked to go out himself to get the stuff I needed, having dropped me at the hotel.
At this stage I was feeling like Ronnie the rag doll after a 50 mile run with a 50lb backpack, and any cares I had about my general appearance were fading fast. After a good two minutes of button pushing by my driver, which saw every window in the vehicle go up and down, the tail gate open and the washers screech across the dry windscreen, I finally convinced him that child locks did actually exist and that the best way of solving the problem of unlocking my door was for him to get out and do it manually. This he finally did and off I shuffled into the store.
Most of these 24 hour stores, and especially pharmacies, have armed security and as expected I received a pretty good visual inspection, which clearly took in the words printed down my left leg and across my chest, neither of which caused a reaction. Perhaps my look was common place and people without medical insurance were forced to leave hospital to get their own medicines. Or perhaps he thought they were a new designer clothing thing. Who knew and I didn't care. Forging deeper into the store with the aid of a trolley used in the fashion of a zimmer frame, I found the prescription counter, handed in the paperwork and loaded up with 6 litres of very colourful gatorade and 2 litres of water from an adjacent aisle.
Having had each of the three prescription medicines explained to me I was presented with the bill...for $376. And there was me thinking that America was far cheaper than rip-off Britain. Ten Zofran orally disintegrating anti nausea tablets cost $330, and as the pharmacist was only too keen to point out, this was my fault, or rather the fault of my dear close friends at the British owned GlaxoSmithKline who I had to blame for charging the US four times as much as most other countries around the world. I made some feeble comment about the scandalous behavior of some US drug companies in the third world and beat a hasty retreat. No point in aggravating the natives too much, but at the same time I wasn't going to let his rampant jingoism go unanswered.
Back in the hotel vehicle and having swept past the store security guard in a slouching, shuffly, Ozzy Osbourne kinda way, with only the slightest of suspicious looks and no movement towards his firearm, I was safe and into the final straight.
On arrival at the hotel front entrance we were met by a hotel security guard with a wheelchair. It looked like the hotel was on the ball and aware of the potential trouble I could cause with a call to the local Food Health Authority. However, little did they know that I knew that they didn't know the truth of the matter. Fortunately at 7:00am there were only a few people in the casino and to be honest, I wasn't really that bothered. To all intents and purposes I was someone famous - who else, looking out of their head with track marks on their arms, would have their own wheelchair with one security guard to push it and another to carry their shopping.
Finally, with the sun streaming through my window, I was wheeled into my room. I had the feeling there was a little loitering and checking I was OK for the purposes of a tip, so I simply groaned, threw myself into bed and pulled the covers over me. And that was that.
Here are a few top tips for when visiting Las Vegas, some of which will apply elsewhere:
• Never eat seafood in a desert.
• Never book a room with a rollercoaster running past the window.
• If you find yourself surrounded by 10 uniformed and armed men and women whilst in bed, try not to panic.
• When admitted to hospital ensure you have trousers and shoes.
• Try to avoid wearing particularly rude t-shirts were there is a danger of ending up in hospital.
• It is impossible to drown intravenously.
• Blame everything on food poisoning and make loud litigious noises.