Zeno's Bar & Grill

We have a report from one of Isabella’s husbands confirming Ms. Penn’s appearance at Eisenhower Medical Center. (That’s right, plural, apparently Ms. Penn cannot be satisfied by one man! The poor man knows her as “Kelly” her other husband knows her as “Melanie”) (Sidebar: Kelly really did faint and have an accident requiring 15 stitches during our joint vacation to Palm Springs)

Here is the report that “Kelly’s” husband told the bartender at Zeno’s last night…and anyone else who would listen.

On Valentines Day, we did a couples massage at the spa, had a complementary glass of champagne afterwards, then laid out by the pool for an hour while the kids played at Camp Hyatt. Picked the kids up, took a nap. At some point Kelly woke up, felt sick, got up to go to the bathroom, fainted, and dove face first into the counter. I'm asleep with earplugs in, hear nothing. I wake to a very faint calling of my name and seeing her on her knees by the bed, as if looking for something underneath. I still have earplugs in and hear nothing. I'm trying to figure out what she wants by reading her hand motions and body language. She is now laying on her back, pants around her ankles. I'm trying to figure out from the visuals what she is doing or wants me to do. Sex on the floor? Sleep walking? She is calling my name, I keep saying"What"? What? What? I'm getting irritated and want to go back to sleep. I finally walk over to her, she says she is bleeding. I think, you’re a grown woman, you’ve been menstruating for quite a few years now. Why don't you plan for these things?

I continue to wake up and notice the blood on her face. All those years of police training come back to me and I finally have an idea there may be something wrong. She tries to get up but tells me she is going to faint again, and proceeds to do so. I catch her this time. Our daughter wants a gummy bear, our son wants me to change the channel to a cartoon. Kelly makes more gurgling noises and bleeds some more.

I lay Kelly on the floor and run to the phone, dialing 911. A man in room 91 answers. I hang up and dial 9, then dial 911. As it rings, Kelly gets up, says she is feeling OK now. I hang up, thus putting the sheriff’s office on high-alert. The phone rings again, it is hotel security; the sheriff’s office is reporting a problem in our room. They are on the way up. Kelly is back on the floor making whimpering sounds and describing the image of a white light. I go down the hall to get ice for her face and encounter an overweight security guard carrying an oxygen tank huffing and puffing toward our room. He seems scared to death to be first on the scene. More Hyatt staff get out of the elevator, these in suits, and I hear them muttering words like"liability" and "lawsuit".

I get back to the room, and the huffer/puffer guard is really freaked out from the blood and Kelly is trying to calm him. He suggests she put herpants back on. Soon the paramedics arrive. Kelly likes the muscular one with the mustache and starts to take her pants off again. Each of them looks at me and is sizing me up as a potential spouse abuser. My red psoriasis-encrusted knuckles do not help matters. Kelly gets loaded into a stretcher, and the kids think it is really cool she gets to go in an ambulance. We follow in our rental car. The kids are disappointed that the ambulance does not have on their lights or siren andwon’t run red lights. They make loud siren sounds in my ear the entire way.

We go to Eisenhower Hosptial. Home of the Betty Ford clinic and the BobHope Intensive Care Unit. We are very excited and hope to see celebrities or drunks or better yet, Robert Downey, Jr. Five hours and 15 stitches, a tetanus shot, and a CAT scan later, Kelly emerges from the bowels of the ER. It took so long because no one in the hospital knew how to treat a 34 year old. The average age of the patients around her is 99. Son thinks it is cool that she looks like Frankenstein. Daughter hides behind me and won't look at her.

We return to the hotel to find we've been upgraded to the Penthouse Suite, also known as the Please Don't Sue Us Suite. All is OK, for the rest of the vacation Kelly enjoyed the suite and her narcotics. The plastic surgeon who did the stitching did a spectacular job and her face is healing nicely. The kids fought like usual, I secretly looked at my Blackberry. All is back to normal.

--Barry