Emergency
It was around ten at night when we returned to the hospital. We’d spent the late afternoon and all evening shunting dutifully between doctors and xrays and now we were back at the hospital we’d started from, headed for an emergency CT scan. The avuncular security guards didn’t stop us this time, just nodded us in with a sympathetic look. The young doctor seemed a tad resigned to see us back in the MRI/CT Scan department for the third time in a month.
I think we were both light headed with stress and tired after a long day of work and pain. Everything looked a bit exaggerated under the bright white lights. As we waited for our turn, all we could do to distract ourselves from the pain and worry was to watch the ebb and flow of humanity. It was late for us middle aged souls, past our bedtime, but the rest of the city was just starting to wake up, getting set to party hard and face the consequences.
All humans are not born equal, nor are they equal in sickness and health. In hospital corridors, this is not so much about simple factors like money and power, but rather the more intricate web of whom you know. An unassuming lady waiting her turn next to us turned out to be the wife of a doctor consulting at the same hospital. In natural progression of this fact, every doctor who walked in to the CT Scan department stopped to check on her, looked at her charts and gave often wildly divergent views. Since they came one at a time, the doctors themselves had no idea of the resultant bemusement of the lady and the entertainment the utterances provided to the rest of us.
Then in contrast to this quiet power play came in another patient, in his early forties, strapped into a wheelchair, in obvious pain. Accompanying this gentleman was his elderly mother. Bent almost double, crumpled cotton saree hastily draped, large red pottu/bindi somewhat erratically centred, she clutched a battered brown purse and had an ID card slung around her neck. As we headed in for the first of our scans, we worried that left unattended, the man would topple out of the wheelchair and the old lady might be unable to help him. When we mentioned it to the nice young doctor, he looked distracted but then reassured us that someone would keep an eye on the gentleman. While hooking us up to the machine (note to self: urgently need to find the funds to buy shares in Siemens – after all, we had contributed to a not minor percentage of the cost of these high tech machines over the last few days), the doctor gave our morale a dubious boost by recognising us as old and valued clients. Our pain meant something to someone after all.
When we came out, the wheelchair gentleman was almost keeled over in pain but the immediate excitement had shifted elsewhere. A younger man on a stretcher was brought in, accompanied by a group of excited young people. From the chatter, it was easy enough to decipher the back story: a group of friends out partying (the patient claimed to have drunk only two pints, much to the exasperation of his wife but more on that later), and this chap had collapsed with a headache and nausea. One of their company was a doctor, and they had all rushed him to hospital. In the little lull while they waited their turn at the machines, a little gentle bickering between the patient and his wife quickly escalated into a muted but audible argument. This man, a self confessed workaholic, chain smoker, regular drinker (only two pints a day if he were to be believed), the premature owner of one heart stent, now had the temerity to blame his wife’s home made soup for all his current ills. Sure, he was stressed and upset but this was a bit much. A woman in labour might be forgiven for blaming her husband for her present condition. Somehow we could not find it in ourselves to be equally forgiving of this patient’s wild accusations. We weren’t sure whether we wanted to clip him one around the already injured head or request a repeat MRI. The wife lost it though. After all the worry and stress she must have been under, this was obviously the last nail in his coffin. She smartly retorted to the soup accuser: I ate it too and I’m fine. And you drank far more than two pints. Huh!! Then she sat herself down and proceeded to ignore him. The friends fluttered around, chirping and tweeting, while the rest of us sat there, stoic in the face of so much drama.
When it was our turn to return to the arms of the Great and Lonely God Siemens, the nice young doctor confided that this was turning out to be an unusually busy night. It was past midnight, and we imagined the hollow sounds of empty corridors on other nights. Tonight though, Emergency was buzzing, people were being given solace and treatment, and all was right with the hospital.
As the sister-in-charge removed our IV line, she shared a piece of gossip – the poor man in the wheelchair had an exploding appendix to deal with. He was heading for an emergency procedure; we were not to worry about his old mother – she was ex-staff and this hospital took good care of their own, as much as they looked after those of us who wandered in at all hours, dazed and confused souls in pain.
We left the hospital around 1.30 am, walking hand in hand in a light drizzle to a taxi stand. We reached home to find a slightly distraught son, wanting to know why it had taken so long at the hospital? We couldn’t remember the last time we’d tiptoed home this late at night. We sheepishly explained, comforted and were comforted in turn, and then we slept – one the deep tired sleep of the exhausted, the other restless as the pain drifted in and out of old familiar nightmares.