Not on your life

Rico says never go to the emergency room unless you have a real emergency. (Bleeding heavily from a gunshot, whatever.) We went last night to Jefferson in downtown Philly about seven because the docs said "oh, just go to the emergency room and have them reset your shunts". That's because Rico has been getting 'something' (hard to describe, but the word Rico uses about himself is 'stupider') over the last few weeks, and all we could ascribe it to was the misadjustment of the brain drains (the shunts) in his head; they got moved by the last MRI he had, and we figured that wasn't helping.
Well, an urban emergency room on any given night is a horrible place, and Jeff's was no exception. First of all, everybody's sick, and some of them are actually unwell, too... (Yes, crazy people go to emergency rooms, too, just like the rest of us.) Most of them are poor (which, in Philadelphia, means most of them are black), and some of them are strange. (The seemingly well-dressed gentleman, for instance, whom Rico thought was well-off until he looked closely and noticed that the man had no socks, no shirt under his suit jacket, and his shoes were unpolished and untied.)
We didn't see anyone for quite awhile (we're talking hours here), and then it was a progression of mystery doctors and tough-but-lovable nurses (just like in the movies) who proceeded to stick Rico with various things. Finally, in the late and then wee hours, Rico got a CAT scan (much better than an MRI) and some x-rays of his shunts.
The diagnosis, delivered by a doctor who was born in 1980, named Rohan, from India (and, yes, he'd read The Lord of the Rings) at oh-dark-thirty: Don't do anything.
A thrilling end to a wonderful evening.
So we didn't. We finally convinced the nurse to take out the intravenous tap, but then came all the arguments over what paperwork they had to perform before we could officially leave. We finally went 'out front' to wait, and just kept going. That's known, as we were told, as 'eloping', so now it's official: Chris and I have eloped. We're just not getting married...