bike gang

"I wasn't going to go over there today, you know, I didn't want it done."

I looked at the patient in front of me. He's a "frequent flyer," a tough old italian man with a gravelly Tom Waits voice and a mean temper but a quick sense of humor as well. His mood changes as quickly as weather does here. He's talking to me about a procedure he had to have done at The Hospital.

"And you know what? I went over but it took like five nurses to make me go. They surrounded me and made me go and I said to the nurse 'I can't believe you all forced me to go!'

"And she said, 'at least it was us and not five bikers.'

"And I said, 'five bikers I could handle, but nurses - forget about it!"

He laughed.

"Can you believe that? But it's true. I'd face bikers over nurses any day."