An aborted emergency

In the morning I got up and made some coffee but it had been so hot during the night - I discovered later that it was the hottest January night in Sydney since records began being collected in the 1850s, with temperatures around 30 deg C - that I decided after drinking my morning cup of coffee to go back to bed and sleep. My sleep during the night had been patchy and I needed to get a few more hours of shut-eye.

When I got up later I cut my toenails and made some breakfast: eggs on toast with fried tomato, fried mushroom, and sliced avocado. I ironed my shirts and so doing got a bit sweaty, then she called me and asked me to drive down to her place to take her to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown. She had a rash on her hand, she said, and the doctor in Pyrmont who had prescribed the anitbiotics to her last weekend was shut. She obviously suspected the antibiotics were responsible for the outbreak on the skin of her hand. I told her I would be down, although I doubted that the emergency was as pressing as she made out.

I got down to her place and found a parking spot for the car, luckily, then went up to her apartment in the elevator. She was fretting about her hand but wouldn't stay still so that I could look at it. She was complaining about a friend who had yesterday wanted to go and have a drink with her, but she had demurred, "I have had a cold and she wants to drink with me? How stupid?" I kept quiet and shepherded her to the car outside, making sure she took her key with her. She had filled up a pink plastic bottle with water before going out the door, which she put down on the floor on the passenger side.

We got onto the main road and were talking about her rash. I asked her if it was really that important that she had to go to the emergency ward in the hospital, and spend three hours sitting in the waiting room. After a while she calmed down and we turned around and drove back to her place. She called a couple of close-by clinics from Google on her phone while we were in the car but they weren't open today, a Saturday. She was much better when we got back to her place, and had quieted down a lot. Inside her apartment she got a wooden plate filled with steamed sweet potato and put it on the table. She asked me to stay to dinner but I said I had to go, and get some rest. I also told her to get some rest too, since she had just recovered from a flu.

I got home and walked to the convenience store. I bought two cans of prepared mackerel and a loaf of bread - the makings of dinner - and walked back to my apartment. I sat down happily at the computer and a message appeared from my friend in Poland asking about a movie she had seen and enjoyed. I made some cheese on toast with tomato and sat down to the conversation.