Transaction

Everything beeps in the hospital. Monitors, ventilators, pagers, elevators... Residents are quite adept at filtering out all those extraneous beeps except for that of their own pager. Or perhaps the current electronic medical device at use.

So it's no wonder that I just walked away from the ATM as it beeped after me.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP!" The machine screamed after me in vain, trying to get my attention. Trying to inform me that not only did I leave the card in the machine, but that I failed to indicate whether or not I wanted another transaction. The machine, by beeping wildly, was successfully advertising the fact that it was primed and ready to spit out some more cash.

So fast forward 7 hours to me at the grocery store:

Open my wallet to pay for the rotisserie chicken and notice that the inside of my wallet looks different. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach develops as I realize that the area of the wallet where the ATM card sits is empty. Nope, after replaying the scene several times in my head, I don't ever remember removing the ATM card from the machine. Nearly stain my pants. Nauseating sensation acutely decreased after cancelling my card and finding out that nobody has used my card since my morning transaction. Lucky.