A True Weird/Horror Story from Forrest Connor!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. You may hear some strong language in this podcast. My old pal Forrest Connor has traveled the world for years as an international flight attendant. He is now a purser. And he visited me at my home a while back here in Las Vegas, Nevada. He sat in my living room and told this story, and I said, Can I record you telling that story? And he said, Sure. So I consider this to be kind of a true horror story. And uh this is long-form storytelling, so you know, you might not want to hear this if you're unless you're bored, but you know, I I think all the details add to it. But I definitely do not think that you should listen to this while you're eating. So uh here is Forrest Connor telling a true story about an experience that he had in another country. Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Well, I'm just trying to figure out where to start here on this story. Um I guess we'll start with I was about to go on a trip. We were heading over to uh Germany and um over to Greece and a few other places, including Bulgaria. Well, we started this trip out in Houston, and when the trip started, I had um, I guess everyone gets some a little like ingrown hair right there on right there on your underwear line, right there at the crotch, right there, well, at the gooch, if um, or taint. Um, and I'm sure there's several other names for it that we can call it, but everyone everyone gets the gist. It's sort of a uh right there on your underwear line, and it's little ingrown hair that your underwear rubs on a little bit, and usually the solution is a little neosporin, and just wear some some loose clothing for a couple days, and it usually renders itself. Well, we started this trip and we go to Germany, and I'm just not feeling good. I'm just thinking it's I'm tired, it's jet lag, and I mean I'm not as young as I used to be, so we uh just I just sort of just stayed, kept kept a low profile, and uh just was just really tired and everything, but um like three or four days into this flight or into this pattern, we uh end up in Bulgaria, and um my friend, um, let's just call her Misty was flying with us, or with me and the rest of the crew, and I end up telling her what was going on. I'd mentioned something to her a couple days before, and just really something nothing big in passing, and then finally I we're having dinner or something, and I say, you know, this little TMI, but this uh ingrown hair I was telling you about a couple days ago is really not getting better. And we just sort of passed it off, didn't really think much more of it at the time, thinking it's still gonna get better. Well, she ends up coming up to my room later that day, and she walks into the room and says, Forrest, I can smell the infection. And it's like, and she's just like, you are not going on this trip. And I'm an instructor, and I was actually scheduled to give her a check ride on this flight. Well, she hangs out in the room for a few minutes, then goes down and talks to my purser. Well, purser, if you don't know what a purser is in the industry, it's basically your flight lead, is who's in charge of all the other flight attendants on the flight. They're basically third in command after the pilot and co-pilot. So they're they're the third person in command. And she calls me up and says, Misty tells me that um that you're sick, that you're not really in any condition to do the flight. So I'm just like, I'll argue with her for a few minutes and say, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be that person that that calls out on the flight at the last minute and screws the flight up. Well, she ends up telling me that there's enough people on this flight that we can do this flight just fine without you. I was like, no, no, I can do it, I can do it. Well, I sort of had to take myself out of the situation and put myself in in her shoes that if I had someone on the flight that was another flight attendant told me was feeling bad and really wasn't what we call fit to fly, I would take them off also, and finally I'm like, okay, fine, I'll call out for this flight, or I'll let you take me off this flight. And at that point, what our procedure is is we have to call our uh our company that does the um our medical insurance and uh takes care of us when we get sick uh overseas. So I'll call them up and they're like, explain the situation to them. And usually they can arrange to have a doctor come see you so you don't have to go out and navigate these foreign countries with uh with the language barrier and everything. So, but that didn't happen in my case. They called me back a few minutes later and says, Mr. Connor, you are going to be going to the hospital. We have a translator at the hospital waiting for you, and we have have a writer here for you for I believe it was $5,000. And they're like, just call an Uber and go to this hospital. Well, I call the Uber, and of course, Ubers over there are just taxis, pretty much. A taxi shows up and takes me to this hospital. I get to the hospital, everything seems to be going great at the time. There's a there's a guy waiting there for me that's a translator to translate uh my English into Bulgarian so they they know what's going on. Well, everything's going fine. We're I'm filling out paperwork. It's always paperwork. You gotta fill out a form first for everything, even in Bulgaria. So doing that, and I get over into the triage area, and the nurse um is asking me these questions about um, it's like, have I had a bowel movement lately? Have I, and she's asking me a bunch of questions that, well, let me just say, like, before we went to the uh uh went over to the hospital, I I changed into like soccer shorts and uh and boxers so that so you know obviously down there so there's not any any pressure on the area. It's and because this thing is is is festering and this pus and stuff coming out at this point. And even Misty, who came into the room, was just like this it smells horrible in here. And and she's been hung out with me several times, and she knows that's just just not me, because you know, there's some people that you just walk into their dwellings and they just smell that way. And the um and let me tell you, the bed sheets over there. I mean, from where I was laying down, you could see where like the pus and stuff had had oozed out of this uh of this uh ingrown hair or the infection there. It was on there, and Misty was like, it just smells terrible in here. And she's like, I know, I know better than you take better care of yourself than that for it this to be normal for you. Something's wrong. So, fast forward, we get back to the hospital, or we get to the hospital, and um talking to the translator, filling out the paperwork, and then we go into the little triage area, and she's asking me all these questions about have I had a bowel movement, have I had um have I been drinking enough? Have I been eating? Have do I feel sick? I was like, well, the kind of the wrong questions to be asking. I understand some of these might just general medical questions, but uh finally I was like, well, no, there's nothing wrong, there's nothing wrong there, and she's like, Well, let's see what's going on. And um I show her, and this woman's eyes, I don't know what she was expecting, but she wasn't expecting to see that because evidently something got lost in translation that she thought I was having GI issues, and when I sort of uh drop trowel and show her what was really going on, she's like, Oh, um, this is not what we were told was going on. It's like we're not set up for this. And after talking with her for a couple minutes, she's like, You've got to go to whatever it was, Peter Popoff Hospital, uh, the public hospital in down in downtown Sofia, Bulgaria. So, after figuring out how to Uber over there, I get into the Uber to there and I walk into the front of this hospital. It's an interesting looking place. It's definitely a public hospital. And I walk up to this lady at the front desk, and of course, the first thing I ask anyone there, um, or wherever I go, is like, do you speak English? And she's like, I think, yeah, she spoke a little bit of English, and she asked for my passport, and evidently our medical, our in-flight medical people had called and told them that I was coming, so I think she was there was some kind of file there waiting for me, and I had to, of course, fill up paperwork and show her my passport, and she's like, you go outside of room 127 and you wait. I was like, okay, um, where is room 127? She's like, points down this little dark-looking, dirty hallway, and I was like, okay, so I'm going down there, walking past, like, look like walking past one guy who looked like he had been in a motorcycle wreck, looked like he had road rash all over the side of his like his leg and everything. And I turned down this other hallway where room 127 is, and it just hits me. The smell of like septus and just just pus and and just it almost like the smell of death almost. It was just very pungent and very just hit you in the face. And there's these little rooms. Did you ever see Beetlejuice right where in um when uh when um Alec Baldwin's character and Gina Davis are walking down the hall, going to the reception area, and like the um, and there's the different doors, and like little numbers written on them and everything, and and um and the curtain flies open. This is the lost souls room. That's what I was thinking about going by those doors because each each door had like a group of people sitting outside of it with different elements, different, different, and different um, I guess different things they were being there to see to be seen. Well, I get to room 127, sit down on this metal bench, and just immediately notice how dirty the floors are, the walls are, just there's just it's just not very clean, and there's about five or six other people waiting outside of room 127, and waiting. That they uh and we're sitting there, and every now and then someone would come out of this this room 127 and say something in Bulgarian, and uh one person would get up, then go come back out and sit. And this happened for about two hours. I'd seen people come and go, and I was like, for sure I'm gonna be next. Well, no, I'm just sitting there, and like I said, after about two hours, I go back up to uh the front desk and it's like, hey, um I'm just trying to see uh if when I'm gonna be called, how how long this is gonna be, what what I need to do. And again, same woman. You go outside room 127, you sit down and you wait. It's like, okay, well, I'm on the phone, I go back and I'm on the phone with with our our medical uh insurance people, and they're like, Well, what's the address of the hospital? And I'm sitting there on my phone trying to figure out the address. I can't find it. And so I go back up to the front desk lady. I was like, can I get the address of the hospital? And she gives me this little index card looking, handwritten index card looking thing with with like Sicilyc lettering and numbers and squiggly lines, and I have no idea what the heck this thing says. And of course, my insurance people are on the phone and is like, we need the address, we need the address. And I'm thinking to myself, first of all, you sent me here, you should know the address. But I was like, I tell you what, I'll take a picture of this card and send it to you guys because there's no way I can translate this to my phone or to uh to you guys. So I snap the picture. And if you want, um, if you want, I can uh send you a picture of the address of that hospital you can post up on the on the website. And um, so I snap that picture, and then I proceed to wait outside room 127 for another hour and a half or two hours, and a guy comes out in scrubs and a mask, pulls his mask off, and says something in Bulgarian. Then, like the majority of the people get up and just start and just leave. I'm just like, okay, and luckily there's a guy sitting next to me. I looked over at him and said, What did this asshole just say? He looks at me and says, He said, There are six people in queue to go inside the room to be seen. The rest of you people have to come back tomorrow. And at this point, I'm wondering, am I in Q? Because I've not been seen by anyone. I don't know if I'm in Q, if I'm supposed to go to go back tomorrow and come back and try this again. So I'm just sitting there, and eventually everyone leaves, and it's just me sitting out in this little hallway. And um, so I I call back the uh the insurance people and I tell them what's going on, and they're like, okay, well, let's get back to you. Let us get back back to you. They call back 10, 20 minutes later, and they're like, okay, you've got two options here. You can go to this hospital, which is um hospital number one, which is the hospital I had just come from four or five hours ago, and that one, they already told me that they weren't set up to handle me there, so they sent me here. And then they're like, well, you can go to this other hospital, which is St. Mary's of the holy Bulgarian goat lover hospital or whatever. And I was like, well, at this point, I might as well go to the second hospital because the first one they've already told me that they cannot see me. So at this point, I'm arranging for another Uber to go to this other hospital across town, and it's about like 10 o'clock at night at this point, and of course, my nether regions are just throbbing at this point from um from just a sitting sitting down and just and really not had anything to eat all day, and of course, this this thing is festering still at this point, and I'm sure it I didn't smell the best at that point either. And so I make it over to this other hospital. I walk in and it looks like a 1970s medical drama type setting. I walk in and it's this like that off-green sort of pastel green looking color on the walls, and there's this metal desk, or not even a desk, it's a table, sitting there in the the back corner of the room, and a guy with a laptop, and I walk over to him and it's like, Do you speak English? And this guy, perfect freaking English, is like, yes. He's like, What's going on? And I was like, I tell him the situation. I've got this ingrown hair that's that's become infected and it's it's festering, and um just I I need to be seen by someone. And me at this point, all day I know I've known that basically I just need to have it lansed and I need antibiotics. That's not that hard. So I I tell him what's going on, and he's like, Okay, go go have a seat. And I was like, oh boy, here we go again. Go out, go out, go over here, have a seat. Well, before I could even sit down, a gentleman from the back room or from the emergency room itself comes out and says, Mr. Connor, I'm like, Yes, sir. He's like, what's going on? And so I tell him what's going on, that I have this festering ingrown hair that's that's that probably needs to be lanced and taken care of. Well, at this point, I'm still in the the the waiting room of the front desk of the hospital, and there's about 10, 15 people in there. Lord knows what they're in there for, but and I'm sitting in front of this, or standing in front of this metal desk where this guy is at, and he comes up, he's like, okay, let's see what's going on. And I'm thinking he's gonna take me to the back and and examine me and see what's going on. I was like, well, he's like, show me. I was like, right here. I was like, hesitated for a second, but I'm like, screw it. So I just dropped trowel right there, right there in the middle of the um emergency room uh waiting area. At that point, I didn't care. And he gets down, he gets down on one knee like he's gonna propose to me, but he's sitting there, just he's probably like probably an arm's length away, um, while I'm holding my junk up to the side and he's looking at it. He puts his um puts his hand to his chin, gets his perplexed look on his face, and he's like, hmm, he looks back, looks at me straight in the eye and says, Okay, we will see you now. I was like, okay, great. So we go back to the triage room, and he tells me to jump up on the table, and there's stirrups in there. He's like, put your feet in this or put your legs in this. I'm just like, okay, he's like, I understand they they have to do it to get there. He's like, okay, we're all guys here. Just go and take your pants off now and and um let me get a good look at this. And when he when I say good look, I mean it's a good look. He's like two or three inches away from my junk, just like with this the same little perplexed look on his face, and then he slowly looks up to me and um says, yes, yes. It's like we're going to have to to lance this and give you some some medicine. I was like, thank you. That's all I've been trying to have done all day today is to get someone to to lent to look at it because anyone with half a brain could see this probably needs to be lanced and and antibiotics and send me on my way. So he gets back down there. Again, gets starts looking real close, and he's like, okay. So he goes and throws the curtain around this little gurney that I'm I'm sitting on or laying on, and comes back in with these implements of mass destruction scalpels and cotton swabs and iodine and all this just stuff to uh perform surgery on me right then, right there. Well, we're sitting there, of course, he sit has his uh assistant uh doing stuff, but we're sitting there just um bullshitting about about everything, about what what I do, what he does. And I asked him, he's like, Well, I've noticed everyone here speaks perfect English. You guys probably speak English better than I do, and especially with my Appalachian accent here. Um, he's like, oh yeah. He's like, we we're a student, uh state-run student hospital that everyone here, everyone here is students. And um it's like and basically I think that they wanted to speak English with me more than anything else while they were doing this procedure. So we get done with the procedure. He's like, we're we're wrap wrapping stuff up. He gives me a prescription for medication and um painkillers, gives me a couple painkillers there, and he's just like, I just want to uh know how how long ago that spider bit you. I was like, it's what? This I was sort of taken aback, like, what do you mean? He's like, Yeah, this was a spider bite. I was like, I thought it was an ingrown hair. He's like, no, no, that was a spider bite right there, uh, pretty much right there next to your balls, pretty much. And I was like, well, I guess it happened probably last week sometime because at the time I was moving out of my apartment in Houston. And the reason I was moving out of my apartment in Houston is because we had a bug infestation, and the landlords there were not doing anything about it, and we had bugs in the apartment, and at the time my mattress was on the floor because I already broke I had already broken down my bed, and evidently uh Creepy Crawley jumped in bed with me and uh bit me, uh bit me on the crotch. So uh, so he gets me, gets me all set up, gives me my prescriptions, and I am about to leave, and I was like, Well, how much do I owe you? He's like, you owe nothing. I was like, I owe nothing. He's like, yes, we are a state-run student hospital. I was like, everything's taken care of. I was like, well, can I pay you something? He's like, no, we we can't accept money. This is a, again, he said it's a state-run student hospital. But uh, I get in the Uber and go back to the hotel, and there was a little casino down there, and my crew had already left and gone to Jordan and come back to Bulgaria by the time this ordeal was over. So I guess in conclusion, what I'm really trying to say here is that in Bulgaria, if you think you have an ingrown hair, beware. It could be a brown recluse Bulgarian ball bite.