Was her son really a patient? (neighborhood, homeless, car)

[fortunatus]

Was leaving the ER at Legacy Emanuel around midnight with my mother, who had been helped and was feeling better, and there's this young woman sitting outside in the cold with a boy 4-5 y.o. holing a bouquet of red tulips. As I was getting the car ready for mom to get in, the girl approaches me asking if I could give her and her son a ride back home. They got here by ambulance, were helped, don't have a car, and have been asking around for a ride for the past 2 hours with nobody willing to help them.

She is very polite and agreeable and is instantly endeared of my mom. Seems eager to just get home, even offers me a $20. She shows me the location on her phone - it's way in the SE, out of our way, but then again it's only 20 minutes and what's that compared to the time we've spent in the ER?

After asking mom if she was OK with it (she was) I take the two - they climb in the back seat. I key in the address the girl gave me and start driving. In a bit, I realize I'm going to the neighborhood below Foster and between SE 52nd and 82nd. I won't use its colloquial name here, but I trust many will know it. Going there after midnight doesn't thrill me and I regret not thinking about just getting her a Lyft - but it's too late. Long story short, I get them to their place safely, we say goodbye and off we go.

My question is about the girl's story, which she told in the car. If I am to believe her, she accompanied her son to the ER in an ambulance because he had 104* fever and could not breathe. I asked her what the condition was - she could not say. I asked if he was helped and her answer was ambiguous. I asked her where they got the tulips (a homeless guy on a corner in our neighborhood sells bouquets exactly like this) and she tells me a story about a woman whose daughter had the bouquet but the woman so liked my passenger that she told her daughter to give the bouquet to her.

These things did not compute for me. For example, how could the ER let out a child so soon with 104 fever - let alone the fact that he didn't look too sick? How come mom would not know how or even if her son was helped? And it just occurred to me that the children's ER at Emanuel has a separate entrance - why were they at the adult ER? This just doesn't hold water, and I already mentioned about the bouquet.

I have a doubt that her son was really a patient. Who do you think they really were, and what would you have done in my place?

[ccjarider]

Never would have entertained taking them anywhere.