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The Day We Were Evacuated From Our Hotel

What a Rat Race...

By Anik MarchandPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Here we were, in the hospital, my aunt and I watching my grandfather’s nurse press into his groin in order to clot the blood to ensure that he doesn’t bleed out (he had had surgery five hours prior). She was causing him some pain, not intentionally but seeing my grandfather in such pain was agonizing for me so my aunt told me to go take a walk (perhaps so he wouldn’t see that I was on the verge of crying because he was hurting). So I got up and walked away.

I came back maybe six minutes later. I was bored in the hallway and the weather was terrible outside. I sat down on the chair facing my grandfather’s bed and watched as this nurse applied all her body weight on his groin. And, all of a sudden, the hospital room telephone rang. We all looked at each other rather confused… No one had given out the hospital room number to anyone. Who could be calling us?

My aunt quickly rushed over and picked up this funny-looking, white phone with huge numbers on it and said “Hello?” I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end but she turned towards me and gave me a look, you know the look that something bad happened and your eyes get wider than a toonie. So I looked at her worried and said, what’s wrong? Is everything okay? Is that mom? As if my mom would go through the trouble of calling the hospital, finding the room number, calling it… etc. instead of just texting me or my aunt. It wasn’t my mom.

My aunt said, “We’re being evacuated from the hotel!”

What? What do you mean we’re being evacuated? Like, evacuated, evacuated? Like… when there’s a hurricane and people have to evacuate their homes? What’s going on?

It had been raining cats and dogs all day, the winds were terrible as well, and we had heard on the news warning of a hurricane in southern Maine near Portland and assumed it would never reach us in Bangor. Sure enough, it did.

My aunt and I rushed over to the hotel and on our way we saw huge trees that had been ripped out from the ground and fallen on the road. We saw another tree which had almost fallen on a beautiful New England style house. I mean, the tree missed the house by a feet only. Roof tiles (I think that’s what they're called…) had been blown off some of the roofs. It looked scary outside, to say the least. No wonder Stephen King gets a lot of inspiration from this town. The weather is as creepy as his novels!

We arrive at our hotel and the power is out. We weren’t aware that the power was out everyone in town, let alone in 60 percent of the state because the hospital was running on generators. The lady at the front desk, a bit embarrassed, told us that due to generator failure we needed to evacuate and go to another hotel for the remainder of our stay. My aunt looked at each and thought “Why the fuck is this happening to us today?”

We were stressing out about having to go gather our belongings and switch hotels to one with a powerful generator but, in good spirits and laughing nervousness, we grabbed the flashlight which was handed to us by the front desk lady and we ventured on to room 217. We looked like two ghost hunters with our flashlights and honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I ACTUALLY needed to use a real flashlight for something necessary (cellphone flashlights don’t count). I thought it was kind of neat and we walked to our room laughing.

Once in the room, however, it was less funny. We needed to use the washroom but it was pitch black and the flashlights didn’t light up the room well enough so, we had to pee in the dark. It was a rather strange feeling, if you ask me! We then had to pack all our belongings in the dark, well, illuminated by two poorly lit flashlights and one cell phone light, it wasn’t pleasant.

Once everything was under control, we needed to figure out where we were going to spend the night. We went back to the lobby asking for directions to our new hotel, Hollywood Casino, and Slots Hotel. She had no idea where she was going to my aunt and I pretended to agree with her information and once in the car, we would figure it out on Google Maps.

$100 worth of data used in a span of 30 minutes, we arrived. We grabbed our room keys and we were amazed. Our room was fancy and the beds, wow! It felt like we were sleeping on a cloud! After putting our bags down, we had to return to the hospital to ensure that my grandfather was doing alright and to make sure he had eaten dinner.

Once at the hospital we were finally able to breathe. My grandfather was doing good, dinner in the belly and in bed for the night. My aunt and I, exhausted from being awake nearly all night the night prior and “waking up” at 4:45 AM, decided to return to our palace and sleep. It’s amazing how a banal place can seem like a palace after you’ve gone through a rough day.

This is the day I was told to evacuate my hotel room.

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About the Creator

Anik Marchand

Anik Marchand moved from New Brunswick to Southern Ontario at a young age, lived some crazy moments in Montréal, and is now based in Madrid, Spain.

E-mail: [email protected]

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