Earlier that day, George had been at his lawyer’s office finalizing his divorce from the “shrew who sucked the youth out of me”. He had gotten married later in life, after what he remembers as a pretty successful bachelorhood. His family and friends, female family and friends he noted, had hounded him for most of his life to settle down and when he got older he admitted that getting married sounded like the right thing to do. But George was a free spirit and matrimony had too many restrictions. The dissolution of his unhappy marriage had been a long time coming.

He decided to spend his first night of legal freedom by spending some of the money had hidden in a safe deposit box he acquired shortly after he was married. He felt that his wife was far too vigilant about his spending so when he had a little extra he would hide it and, subconsciously knowing that divorce was in the cards, he built up a little freedom fund. Now that he was single again, single for good, he planned a long evening of good food, hard drinking, and some gambling-all things his wife had hated. He also used a website his card-playing buddies had told him about, to find a temporary lady friend.

At some point in the early hours of the next day he woke up to paramedics and the hotel manager looking down at him at his residency hotel. He was naked on the floor and handcuffed to a pipe attached to the baseboard heater. There were random specks of glitter on his oiled body and he smelled of alcohol and urine. There was also a slight scent of seared flesh. His shoulder and part of his upper arm had been leaning against the heater for so long he had developed second degree burns. The shoulder was also severely deformed by an obvious dislocation.

His date had called 911 for someone having multiple seizures at the hotel. She had described him as an elderly 70 to 75 year old man, although George was only 56. She also robbed him, apparently, taking George’s watch, jewelry, and cash, even his lotto tickets. The hotel manager recalled seeing a “working girl” leave more than an hour before. He offered to go to his office to get a handcuff key that they kept for situations like this one. “It happens more often than you can imagine,” he told us quietly with wide eyes and eyebrows raised. The manager also approved of our latex gloves, saying that housekeeping services were sporadic and not very consistent.

“It was a night to remember!” George told us triumphantly, when asked about what happened. The diamond in his gold front tooth sparkled as he gave us his big wide smile. Unfortunately though, he didn’t remember many of the details. But despite being handcuffed to a heater, robbed, burned, and experiencing what looked like a painful dislocation, George was in good spirits. He conceded that he probably did have a seizure since he was incontinent and his seizures usually coincided with nights of heavy drinking. His blood pressure was also very high, and he told us he did suffer from hypertension. When asked what he took for it, he simply said “blood pressure pills.” He didn’t know what kind because his wife had always picked up his prescriptions from the pharmacy and when she did, she arranged them into multi-day containers with the days of the week listed on the sections. He hadn’t taken any of his medications since he moved out, more than four months ago. He also didn’t know anything else about his medical history besides the seizures and high blood pressure. “My wife was the one who kept dragging me to doctors and made me take take all those pills,” he said distastefully, as if it were yet another terrible thing his divorce lawyer had liberated him from.

I wondered how the ex wife was celebrating as I looked around the dismal room George was living in. The manager had told us the hotel had an assortment of leasing arrangements. “Some stay an hour, some stay a day, and other stay longer,” he told us. Although George had a dresser, it looked like he hadn’t unpacked, as he appeared to be living out of two suitcases that were open and set up on stands. The queen sized bed mattress was covered in a yellow stained zipped up covering. It was bare except for a disheveled sheet and two pillows. The walls were covered in a dark wood-like paneling and the floor was covered in a stained, green low pile carpet. George had a small refrigerator and a hot plate. On a small shelf he had a bottle of ketchup, a bottle of hot sauce, two boxes of Capt’n Crunch, and a loaf of white bread, the kind I thought they had stopped making after I left grammar school. On the nightstand he had a few bottles of liquor with various levels of liquid in them, several dirty glasses with cigarettes extinguished in them, and a dirty fork.

George seemed genuinely content, despite the current situation. Not once did he complain about the pain to his arm or shoulder or the IV we gave him in case he had another seizure. He expressed some intermittent discomfort when we splinted his shoulder and when we went over bumps on the way to the hospital but he assured us “it’s not your fault.” He was even sympathetic towards the woman who robbed him. “At least she called you guys,” he said. ” Who knows how long I would have been laying on that floor for if she hadn’t?”

We chose a burn center to go to because it was also a trauma hospital but it was a little bit of a longer ride. Along the way George told me about his happy outlook for the future and how he’d never get married again. I implored him to follow up this hospital visit by going to all the doctors his wife had previously dragged him to. I tried to appeal to his motivations by suggesting that he didn’t want to give his ex the satisfaction of seeing him in a wheelchair if he had a stroke. He considered it a salient point and I was hopeful. I also suggested that he get tested for STDs and he gave me a sly wink and a smile.

At the hospital the nurse asked George how he had damaged his arm. With a big smile that showed off the diamond on his front tooth he said, “By living the freestyle life of a single man!”