It's 7 AM and I'm awake. Did I order room service last night? Yes, yes I did. However, that cheeseburger, chocolate ice cream and Diet Coke I insisted on never actually made it into my body. In fact, there's no evidence the requested items even made it into my room: There is no tray outside the door and not a single stray sesame seed.
Since I'm one of those people who can't go back to sleep once I'm awake, I'm going to the casino. I throw on a tie-dye shorts and gray sweatshirt with no bra getup, which I think looks fine. Turns out bras were made for good reason and it's freezing. You do the math.
I make a quick stop at the coffee shop and, as I'm in line, I start to remember slices of my night: It's coming on fast. I was in a club (ew). I yelled at a party bus worker (oops). I drank straight from the Jameson bottle (ouch).
I pull out from the flashbacks and find myself fixated on a tuna sandwich in one of those gross, I-made-and-wrapped-this-yesterday-morning packages. I shouldn't do it, but it looks so good.
I wander through the gift shop and contemplate buying a tiny hat of the variety that sits on the side of your head. As I'm debating the pros and cons of wearing a tiny zebra hat with rhinestones to the blackjack table I notice something on my arm. What the hell? Wait, how did that get there? I start whizzing through all the ways that half-dollar size, not-yet-scabbed injury got there. It looked identical to similar wounds I obtained from wiping out as the fat kid on the elementary school gym floor.
And then I remembered. Oh God.
I crashed down onto the ground last night. But it was no ordinary fall. In my heels, I'm a tall drink of water. Six foot two. When I go down, it's a scene. There were guys crowded around me doing that annoying, "Girl you ok?", "damn girl that looked painful" thing.
First off, don't call me girl. Secondly, I'm not going to give you my number.
To give you a better visual of this fall I need you to imagine a baby taking one of those naps where they look like they are never going to wake up. Arms above the head, legs spewed awkwardly like a crime scene chalk drawing -- face down on the concrete.
I snap out of it and walk over to some game that looks suspiciously a lot like that board game Trouble. But I quickly realize I have no idea how to play it, so I move on to a slot machine that has something to do with a lotus, and promptly blow $50.
This morning hurts.
It's now 9 AM and the Hangover Bus rolls up in an hour and a half. Thank the sweet, sweet lord.
I hop onboard the bus and am immediately welcomed by a doctor. Now I'll admit, when I first heard about a bus that gives you an IV of fluid and vitamins after a night of head-in-the-bowl drinking, I was pretty much convinced the "doctor" on this "bus" wasn't real. But to my surprise, he was, in fact, very real and I was certainly on a bus.
So I join the other people who tried a little too hard to make this hangover bus worth it and I prep for the needle. Dr. Burke puts it in my vein -- and I'm ready to rock. For the next hour I go through two bags of fluid and feel my hangover slowly disappearing.
Dr. Burke tells me all types of stories of different levels of hangovers that walk in. Some people, he says, have to have a trash can in front of them before the fluid kicks in. He explains to me that he decided to start this mobile business because it's "faster, easier and healthier than any other self remedies" and tells me about one man he met that cured his hangovers with two quarts of Gatorade, a triple espresso and some ibuprofen.
By the end of the session I was flying high and ready to face another day drinking session at the pool, even though he told me to wait six hours before boozing -- sorry, this is Vegas. I get off the bus feeling almost too rejuvenated. Was there a little joy juice in that IV drip? I'll never know. But whatever happened inside that bus, was a very, very beautiful thing.
Here's to another night in Las Vegas. Let's just hope this time I stay on my feet.
