We entered the parking garage and crossed over to an exit. I guess it was a shortcut because when we came out the helipad was right in front of us across a driveway.

When we got to the helipad there was an elevator that took us up to the landing pad. The first thing I noticed about the helicopter was that the rotors weren’t turning. I guess they shut them down for safety reasons.

There were two guys standing next to the helicopter. They introduced themselves. The tall one was Ken and the shorter one was Arnold. Arnold helped Mom get on first, then he lowered a gurney and Ken helped me lie on it. He pushed a button on the end of a cable and we were slowly lifted to the open door on the side of the helicopter.

“I assume that you’re Brian Anderson?” Ken asked and I nodded. “Do you need to recline during our flight?”

“No. I should be fine sitting up. I’ve been sitting in a chair in my room the last couple of days.”

“Okay.”

We got to the door and Ken and Arnold wheeled me in. Arnold strapped down the gurney and Ken helped me to a sitting position which made it easier to get off. He led me to a seat next to Mom that looked like it should be in a fancy sports car and I sat down and was strapped in. It wasn’t just a seatbelt like in a car, it was a harness that wrapped around my shoulders and across my stomach as well as across my lap. It felt very secure. Arnold moved between my seat and Mom’s and sat in the left-hand seat in the cockpit ahead of us and strapped himself in.

“We have to put this pair of headphones on you, Brian. It fights tightly on each ear. If it hurts on your left side, please let me know.”

After Ken adjusted it he asked, “Does this hurt the side of your head?” I heard what he said through the earphones, so he must have been using a mike

“Nope. It feels fine. Where do I select the music I want to hear?” I grinned at him, showing that I was kidding.

“Press button one for Enya.” I guess my expression made him laugh. “No, I’m sorry, Brian, but there’s no music. These headphones are to shield you from the noise of the helicopter. To entertain you you’ll be able to listen in to our conversations with traffic control. If you want to sleep, and don’t want to be disturbed you can press this button to turn off the sound. However, we can override that if there’s something important we need to tell you, like when we’ll be coming in for a landing. The slider here is the volume control.”

“Can I take pictures out the window? And of the inside of the helicopter?”

“Sure. Just don’t use any flash without letting us know in advance, okay? The way you do that is to press this second button and you’ll be in two-way conversation with me. When you’re finished press it again to turn it off. It turns on the sound independent of the button that turns off the sound. If you want to talk to your mom, use this third button and you’ll be in two way conversation with her, and her headphone will automatically switch to your two-way line. The same when she wants to talk to you. When you turn off either of the two-way buttons, whatever setting you have for the sound button will be used. Any other questions?”

“Will you be telling us what we’re flying over?”

“Sure. As long as you have the sound turned on. If you have a question about what you see, just use the two-way and ask.”

“Do we fly over downtown Oklahoma City?”

“We’ll fly almost directly north from Weatherford, paralleling Interstate 35 to the west. The first major city we’ll come to is Norman, and you should be able to see the University of Oklahoma campus. We’ll fly over downtown Oklahoma City then veer north-northeast to the helipad at the OU Medical Center in downtown Edmond. We have to pay attention to ATC so we stay out of the way of flights in and out of Will Rogers Airport and Tinker Air Force Base. We’ll fly almost exactly between them.”

“What’s ATC?”

“Air Traffic Control. They are the eyes and ears for every plane and helicopter and whatever is flying anywhere in the U.S.A. and Canada. Except perhaps the occasional flying saucer.”

“How many flying saucers have you guys seen?”

“We’re eagerly waiting for our first one. I always keep my camera handy.”

“Let me know if you see one. I think that would be funny.”

He laughed. “So do we.”

“When are we going leave for Edmond?”

“Our scheduled departure time is noon, and our ETA is about 13:30.”

“Okay, what are ETA and thirteen-thirty?”

“ETA is Estimated Time of Arrival. 13:30 is 24-hour clock time for 1:30 in the afternoon. Using 24-hour clock time make it easier for us to calculate our takeoffs and landings. There’s none of that silly a.m. and p.m. stuff to have to figure out.” He grinned.

“But I like a.m. and p.m.” I joked.

“Well, if you get into aviation as a career you’ll find that the 24-hour clock is the only way to go.”

He moved across the aisle to Mom and went through a much shorter discussion with her. Apparently she didn’t have as many questions as me. Also she probably heard what Ken told me.

Ken looked at his watch. “I think we’d better get buttoned up and ready to get going.”

Ken closed the double doors on the right side and latched them shut then he checked the latches on the doors on the left side. He rechecked Mom’s safety harness and her earphones, and then did the same for me. He moved forward and sat in the right-hand seat in the cockpit and strapped in. I heard a click and then I was able to hear the conversation between Arnold and Air Traffic Control. There was a lot of jargon that I didn’t catch, but it was still very interesting to listen to what they said back and forth.

Even though I was wearing the earphones, when the rotor started up there was a lot of noise and vibration. I saw that Mom was gripping the armrests on her seat. I reached over and patted her left hand. She looked at me and smiled, took a deep breath, and seemed to relax.

We lifted off. It was a blast! At first we moved down toward the helipad, then we made a fast jump up and forward. We tipped so we were pointing downward and then straightened up. The noise got louder, a lot louder, and we started climbing. Once we got higher the noise wasn’t quite as loud and we were moving forward and up at the same time. The feeling was weird at first, but it was a lot of fun. Sort of like an amusement park ride.

I looked out the window to my left. I could see fields, houses, and roads below us. I poked Mom’s arm. She turned, and I mimicked taking a picture. She took out Dad’s digital camera and handed it to me. I turned it on and looked at the screen. I decided I didn’t need to use the flash for taking pix of the inside of the helicopter. I took a couple of Mom, and several of the crew. Then I turned to my left which was a little difficult because of my cast and sling, and my safety harness. I used the zoom so the edges of the windows weren’t visible in the screen and took several pix. Thing is, most of what we were flying over looked like most of what we were flying over, so right now I didn’t need more than a few pix outside. I zoomed to wide and took a couple of pix showing the frame of the window. I handed the camera to Mom and she took a couple of me. Well, maybe a few more than a couple.

I turned off my sound. I leaned back and closed my eyes and I guess I fell asleep.

“We’re about to cross over the state line and you will be looking down at Oklahoma. The state line is the river just ahead. You’ll see”

That announcement woke me up. I looked out the window and laughed.

Mom turned the two-way conversation between her and me. “Brian, what’s so funny?”

“Look down there. It looks the same as when I was looking down at Texas. There’s no difference!”.

“The difference is that we’re closer to home.” She looked at her watch. “We’ve come about half way. Another 45 minutes and we’ll be in Edmond.”

I turned back to the window and watched the land and roads pass below. After a little while I saw a fairly large town and poked Mom and pointed down. She looked and nodded. I was starting to doze when Mom poked me and pointed down. Now we were over a large city.

Mom connected to me. “That’s Norman. I’ll take some pictures of the university out my window.”

From my window I could see an expressway and after we crossed another river there was a mall. Then there were houses, lots and lots of houses. It got more city like as we flew further north. I guess that by now we were in Oklahoma City or some of the suburbs. Finally I saw downtown with lots of tall buildings. I saw the Botanical Garden with the Crystal Bridge that has tropical plants. I saw the Parkway, then the Turnpike, and we were over Edmond. We were going lower, so I knew we were almost at the OU Medical Center. I saw downtown Edmond, then we circled the helipad and we dropped down and landed with a couple of bumps. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, I guess. The helipad was on the roof of a building that looked like a garage.

The rotors were shut down, and even though I was wearing the headphones the sound level went way down. I reached up and took off the headphones and fumbled to take off my safety harness which was hard to do one-handed, but Ken came back and did it for me and then for Mom. I stood up. It felt so good to stand. Ken and Arnold opened the doors on the right side and a ramp was pulled up to the side of the helicopter. An orderly pushed a wheelchair up the ramp to the top. Ken guided me from where I was standing to the wheelchair, and I turned and sat down. The orderly latched a strap like a seatbelt across my lap, turned the wheelchair, and eased me down the ramp to the helipad. I was wheeled into an elevator, followed by Mom. I turned and waved to Ken and Arnold, and they grinned and waved back.

The elevator stopped and the wall I was facing opened. I hadn’t realized that it was a door. A door on both front and back of an elevator. Weird. I was wheeled to an examination room. The orderly helped me get out of the wheelchair up onto the examination table. Mom sat on a side chair. The orderly left.

“Did you notice that the orderly didn’t say a word to us, Brian?”

“Yeah. Weird. And now we’re in here and I don’t know why. Wasn’t Dr. Linscomb supposed to see me?”

“Yes, that’s what Dr. McFadden told us.”

We sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

“Maybe they forgot about us, Mom. Don’t they usually have a nurse come in and tell you how long it’s going to be?”

“All right, enough is enough. We’ve been in here for over a half hour. I’m going out and find out what’s going on.”

There’s this series of jokes about Murphy’s Law. It’s about how you try to do something and the universe bites you in the butt. Mom got up and put her hand on the door knob, and one of Murphy’s Laws struck. The door was opened in and Mom had to step back real fast to keep from being knocked down.

“Excuse me!” It was a nurse. The name on her badge was Delores Harrison. “You are?” she asked Mom.

Nurse Delores stood there looking at us like we were some sort of criminals.

Mom pointed to me. “This patient is Brian Anderson. I’m his mother, Phyllis Anderson. We arrived at about 2:00 by air ambulance from Weatherford, Texas. We’ve been here for over half an hour waiting for Dr. Linscomb.”

Delores looked at a clipboard she was holding. “I don’t see your name on my roster. Let me check. I will be right back.”

She propped the door open and walked down the hall. Mom was watching where she went. “She went to a nurses’ station.” She stepped back in and sat down. “At least she left the door open so it wouldn’t feel so much like we were in jail.”

I started giggling.

“Alright, what’s so funny?”

“It’s silly. But here we’re feeling like we’re in jail while Quin is probably hanging out with his buddies in the sunshine. He’d better enjoy himself because he doesn’t know what kind of problems he’s going to have, and I’m going to make sure he has them in spades.”

Mom looked at me like I had gone too far with what I said, but she didn’t say anything to me. If she had I would have repeated what I said because I was absolutely serious.

Delores came back in about two minutes with an orderly who pushed a wheelchair into the room.

“I am so sorry Brian, and Mrs. Anderson. You were brought to the wrong wing of the hospital. You will be moved to where you should have been taken originally.”

“Thank you. Brian was wondering if we’d ended up in jail.” Mom grinned to show that she was kidding.

Delores smiled then shook her head and sort of grimaced. “When the paperwork was generated someone transposed the first two digits of the number for the examination room. The end result is that you ended up almost all the way across the hospital complex from the neurology department where you should have been taken. Mrs. Anderson, instead of moving Brian all the way there in a wheelchair, and having you walk all that distance, Carlo will take you to the basement level where you’ll be transported in a cart. It’s similar to a golf cart, or actually more like the powered carts you see transporting people at the airport. At the other end Brian will be put in a wheelchair and Carlo will take you to the correct examination room where Dr. Linscomb is waiting to see him.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “That actually sounds like fun. Maybe not as much fun as the helicopter, but a lot better than a wheelchair. Or a gurney!”

Carlo asked me if I needed him to help me get onto the wheelchair and I shook my head and stood. Nevertheless he held my right arm and sort of guided me until I was seated.

“I know you think you could have done this all by yourself, but if you slipped and fell when trying to get into the wheelchair you could sue the hospital. That’s why I had to guide you. At least I didn’t have to lift you under your arms.”

“Even more important is that Carlo could lose his job if you’d fallen,” Delores added.

Carlo grinned. “That too. Are you ready to start your trip across the hospital campus?”

“Sure,” I replied, and I was wheeled out of the examination room with Mom alongside of me and Delores following us.

“Bye, Brian, bye Mrs. Anderson. I’m sorry for the mix-up.”

Mom looked back. “It wasn’t your fault, Delores. Thanks for your help getting things straightened out.”

Carlo wheeled us to an elevator bank and pressed the down button. It took a while for an elevator to arrive. I guessed that the hospital was busy. The OU Medical Center is the main hospital in Edmond and in the north part of Oklahoma City and its suburbs.

We got to the basement and Carlo wheeled me out and turned left, then right, then left again. It seemed like a maze down here. There were strong cooked food smells as we passed by a huge kitchen where tall carts were standing with food trays. I guessed that they were ready to be wheeled away to serve patients. That reminded me that I was getting hungry. And thirsty, too.

Finally we made another left turn and there were the airport carts. That’s what I’d call them because that’s what they looked like. Carlo wheeled me up to the first one in line and set the brakes on the wheelchair.

“Brian, I’m going to guide you the same way I did when we left the examination room.” He held onto my forearm and I stepped into the cart. The seat was like a padded bench with seatbelts. Carlo strapped me in, then assisted Mom onto the cart and strapped her in too. He pushed the wheelchair to the other side of the hall and got into the single front seat and put a key into an ignition switch just like a car.

We took off down the hall. It was brightly lit, and the main thing I noticed was the lack of windows or doors on either side. It only took a few minutes and we pulled up and stopped end of the line of another row of the carts. He set the brake and removed his key. He helped Mom out then stepped across the hall and got another wheelchair for me.

“We’re almost there. Another minute or two and you’ll be in the correct examination room,” he explained as he guided me onto the wheelchair. He was right, and a few minutes later we were in another examination room. No Dr. Linscomb sitting there waiting for us, however.

As Carlo left a nurse entered. Her name badge read Alicia Flores. She smiled and looked at me.

“So, you must be Brian Anderson, our misplaced patient. And you must be Brian’s mother. I’m Alicia, and I’ll be assisting Dr. Linscomb as he examines you, Brian. He’s on his way here now.”

As she said that a tall, thin, blond doctor in white entered the room.

“Hi, Brian. I’m Dr. Linscomb. Let’s take a look at you and we can start making some decisions about your recovery care.”