Let’s get it over with: Yes, it’s one of those days when the weather makes me ache and gives me a headache. Yes, the temporary fillings where I’m getting a bridge soon are incredibly sensitive, and my jaw aches. Yes, I have bad knees, and a bad hip.

And now, I have puncture wounds, bandaids all over me, and an eleven-page after-visit summary, which incidentally notes that I am due for a hearing aid check in November, because the emergency room I visited today is also part of my larger health organization.

See, when I was petting the adorable stray cat I’m quarantining on my third floor, she got a little scared, and she bit me. Hard. I have holes in my hand that are still leaking five hours later.

Then she hissed, and then she purred again, and I sighed, left, looked up cat bites, texted my adult kid that I had been bitten, washed my hand, and took the bus down to the Urgent Care Center, where a guy eating a late lunch out of a styrofoam tray told me they don’t have rabies vaccine at Urgent Care and sent me to the ER.

I took the bus to the emergency room, therefore. I got security scanned, showed my ID to the clerk, had my blood pressure taken, and my wonderful, kind adult kid joined me. My kid shared an interesting New Yorker article on trauma narratives with me, and texted me a description of an interesting T-shirt they had seen. There was a person in a wheelchair, entirely covered with those thin hospital blankets, right in front of us, and someone listening on his phone to a Tik-Tok narration about Jesus and Mary being Black. An anxious couple kept getting updates on someone further in the bowels of the ER who couldn’t have visitors yet.

My kid and I discussed whether the stray would have to be euthanized. I texted my friends who foster cats. No one is taking fosters right now.

I was still bleeding from my puncture wounds. The clerk got me a little box of tissues.

Periodically, someone would come out and shout a name, and it was lucky my kid was with me because I would have gotten up for every name except mine. That was because the person who was actually calling my name called me “Debbie,” which is not my name, though it does begin with a D.

A doctor and a nurse interviewed me and told me I would be getting immunoglobulin, a tetanus shot (it has been over five years), four rabies shots, and an antibiotic that I do not tolerate well. We discussed emergency rooms. I told them about my friend who works at a North Philadelphia ER, and they agreed that place is a shit show. I told them about going to a nice suburban ER when I got my hand impaled some years ago, and they told me that suburban ER isn’t as nice as it used to be because of hospitals shutting down. My kid told them about taking the bus to the hospital when they were in labor. They told me when I get my follow-up rabies shots, I should come first thing in the morning, like 6:00.

Then my kid and I went back and sat down in the waiting area, because that part was just for telling me what they were going to do, not for doing it.

My kid called their vet and found out that though our stray got her rabies vaccine three days ago, it takes two weeks to be effective. I texted two of my friends who foster cats, because obviously this kitten isn’t going into my kid’s house where they have a five-year-old. Meanwhile, a Mr. Williams was paged repeatedly, and also people came out and called other names, and no one answered. Eventually my kid told me someone was finally calling my name, and I went in to a back room so two guys in scrubs, a physician assistant and a nurse, could administer the shots.

The two guys were happy people. They rummaged in a drawer full of hypodermic needles while they explained to me all over what they were going to do to me, and while the nurse kept filling multiple hypodermics. The physician assistant, Alex, shot my hand with three needles full of immunoglobulin, and then gave me more of it in my shoulder. He told me it was a shame you can’t wait to see if the cat is rabid, but by the time symptoms show up, you’re dying.

The immunoglobulin shots were thick, and they burned.

I showed the two guys my new septum piercing because it has been a week for people sticking needles in me, and they were impressed. I inadvertently said something crude about people sticking things into me all week, and my kid was amused.

Alex left. The nurse, Christopher, gave me the tetanus shot and the rabies shot in the other shoulder. The nurse told me I am getting three more rabies shots over the next couple of weeks, but I’m lucky because they all count as one ER visit. When he got bitten by a dog, his first rabies vaccine was at one hospital, and his other shots were at the other hospital, so it counted as two ER visits. We discussed his dog and his bicycle, and why he almost never drives and hasn’t had his car inspected for several years.

I commented vaguely that I was still leaking from my hand, so he went and got me a whole handful of band-aids. I go back Wednesday for the second shot. Then two more, the next two Sundays.

My kid walked me down to the pastry shop and bought me some kind of croissant, and we sat for a few minutes in a little pocket park where the trees are wreathed in lights and a fountain trickles happily. My kid told me they would be feeding the cat from now on, and I explained that the grandchild is starting kindergarten tomorrow and don’t be ridiculous.

The cat probably doesn’t have rabies, mind you. And it’s not her fault.

I miss my mom. She wouldn’t be any help. I still miss her. But I don’t seem to have a headache any more, so there’s that.