ADVENTURES IN MEDICINE

Processing in the small nurses room, blood pressure, pulse and temperature, was done quickly by the experienced triage nurse. It was all somehow impersonal but efficient. I tried to sympathize with the nurse repeating the procedures all night, patient after patient. It was also a little intimidating, like being a small piece moving through a large machine. I hoped that perhaps this would not be so bad. With a handful of completed documents and my health card I was sent to the nearest clerk’s desk. Here my identity and personal information were verified and I was relieved of the paperwork. The clerk returned my health card and instructed me to take a seat in the waiting room. I asked how long, approximately, the wait might be. The young woman looked at her computer screen for a moment, then said it would be about five hours for the type of examination I was there for. Despite myself I could feel the frown on my face. The thought that this would not be too bad left quickly. Not really wanting to complain but not able to resist speaking I replied that I would be there all evening then. With that, the machine spit me out into the waiting room to await the next phase of processing.

Back in the waiting room, I studied the people who were already dug in for the long haul. On one bench, made of three chairs built into one piece, a woman was sleeping with her head pillowed on the arm of the bench at one end. She was covered with a blanket. How long had she been there?

Others held an arm awkwardly across their chests or were missing a shoe. Some were quite composed and using their cell phones to text. I assumed that they were waiting for people already taken in. A few were in wheelchairs. One man in a wheelchair I recognized and could smell the Listerine he had been drinking. He was in rough shape at the best of times. I started to wonder what I was doing there. Surely, my issue did not require a trip to the emergency room. The deal was done, though, and I was one of the pieces of product inside the machine now. I decided that the best I could do was to try and be patient.

So this would be home for the next five hours. The next time my family doctor suggested I go there to be checked over, I might want to debate the idea with him a little. Walking outside I found it was still sunny and warm. It was roughly 4:30 pm. The driveway to emergency was long and downhill into a loop to turn around at the hospital doors. Sheltered parking for ambulances was on one side of the loop with a separate entrance for the people they wheeled in on stretchers. On the north side of the loop, not far from the entrance, was a bench and open sidewalk. The sidewalk led back up the hill.

A man and woman sat on the bench smoking and a second man with a cigarette leaned against the red brick wall about forty feet toward the hill. I saw the no-smoking sign behind the seated couple but also numerous cigarette butts on the concrete in front of them. A security guard walked across the loop in front of the bench and disappeared into a small door further up the sidewalk. He had not seemed too concerned about the smokers. There were a few signs along that wall directing smokers to the top of the hill.