Where was Norman Bates? Dori’s horror hotel stay in Ellensburg

Our managers do a really cool two-week intensive program at Central Washington University in Ellensburg for people who want to get into radio. They asked me if I would go over and speak on Monday, so I arranged to speak from 9 to 10 a.m. in order to make it back for the show at noon.

I arrived in Ellensburg at about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday night and had dinner with our program director. At 10 p.m., I got back to the hotel and sat down at the desk to do show prep.

It wasn’t until about 1:30 a.m. that I was ready to go to bed. I went over to the bed, pulled down the bedspread, and what did my eyes see, but — a nickel-sized drop of blood. Right in the middle of the top sheet.

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Now I had a decision to make. I could fold the sheet so the blood was far away from me and try to sleep, or I could call the front desk. I asked myself if there was any way I could get to sleep, but I soon realized that there was no way I could sleep on a blood-soaked bed. So I called the front desk.

I’m not going to name the hotel, by the way, because I’m not interested in bringing bad publicity to anyone.

About 25 minutes later, I hear a knock on the door. It’s the lady from the front desk. She apologizes for her lateness, saying she had to help another customer first. I have blood on my bed at 2 a.m.! What other customer’s needs could have possibly been a higher priority? For all I know, there could have been a murder in this room.

The front desk lady pulls down the sheet and says, “There’s blood on the bedspread, too. That’s disgusting.” She tells me, the customer, that it’s disgusting. Um, yeah! For some reason — I’m going a little Roseanne Barr here, but maybe it was the Ambien I took — I didn’t think to switch rooms. And the front desk lady didn’t bring another bedspread, so she had to go get one of those too. About 20 minutes later she comes back, and has got all of the bedding on the floor. She’s a front desk person, not a housekeeper, and she doesn’t know how to make the bed. She’s a slow mover.

I finally get to bed after 3 a.m., knowing I have to get up at 6:30. At this point, I’m starting to worry that some bloodborne disease is the reason why I’ve got a burning rash on the backs of my thighs in this blood-soaked hotel at 3:30 a.m. I’ve got to to make a speech in the morning, I’ve got show prep, and I’ve got to do this drive to make it back to the show on time.

Even with the fresh sheets, what are the odds that it hasn’t sunk into the mattress and it’s going to start seeping up through the bottom sheet? Then the question becomes — why do we ever go to hotels? What is wrong with us? We all have an immune system, and our bodies can handle a certain amount. But our psyches — that is a different story. I don’t want to lie in any amount of blood.

What should the hotel give me as compensation for my night of horrors in Ellensburg? Leave your answer in the comments.

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