Hospital Emergency Room

 

The tumble seemed to go on forever, a bit like a slow-motion film, but it was only three stairs. It left me bleeding with my head nearly under the dining room table.

Three SAMU people, two men and a woman, arrived quickly with their medical bags and packed me into the ambulance for the trip to Perpignan hospital. The youngest sat next to me and we talked about his recent move back to Catalonia (a lot of locals think of themselves more as Catalonian than French), how he and his girl friend of seven years are saving to buy a house before having children.

Before they pulled away Rick handed me my wallet with identity and insurance papers, telephone, and two New Yorkers. For long emergency room waits, it is good to have reading matter if not a library.

As I was being handed over to the Urgence (emergency room) staff I heard one nurse say how they had almost nobody yesterday and now they had 65. I was grateful for The New Yorkers. Every cubicle was occupied and gurney with waiting patients filled the free space.

There was a man moaning in pain. 

A woman probably in her sixties, overweight with her frizzy hair in a bun. It was colored very light blond with long roots. A nurse snapped at her to be quiet. She wasn't and for the next seven hours I could hear cries and whines. Eventually she even marched around the emergency room and the corridor carrying her saline solution still whining and crying.

A man who could have played Rasputin in any Russian period piece was rolled in. His T-shirt was up to his nipples and his stomach was like a huge washtub of bread dough that had been pock marked. Sometime during the next couple of hours, two security men came in and talked to the Rasputin-wantabe. I couldn't hear what they were saying. Darn it.

It was five hours before I was rolled into exam room 12 and three hours after that, the doctor arrived. I had almost finished one New Yorker. He was from Morocco but had been in Saudi Arabia before taking the job in France three months before. He spoke French and English. I understood his French better, and he understood my English better. He liked it when I said Shukran.

It has taken me almost a year to get my hair where I want it to be. Hearing the snip-snip-snip of the scissors was not a happy experience. I realized that my hair was also blood-soaked and the thought I was back as a red-head flashed through me mind. Vanity.

He gave me four small shots of anesthesia before starting the stitches. He liked that I said it felt like mosquito bite, a baby mosquito. He repeated that several times.

A male nurse arrived for a tetanus shot maybe after another hour but within 15 minutes I was rolled down the corridor for my brain scan.

By now, the exam rooms were all occupied and patient-filled gurneys formed a stationary parade in the corridor. One man in his early 20s with an athlete's body had a T-shirt that read, "Papa Chat."

From an exam room, a man called Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame with a variety of intensity from whispers to desperation screams. A nurse did go in, but the Madames continued while she was there and after she left. Later he switched to calling "Lola" and something that sounded like "I have," which I couldn't figure out.

I fell asleep. 

By seven the Moroccan doctor came to tell me my scan was normal (whew) and he would prepare the paperwork so I could go home. 

I called Rick on a phone that was down to 2%. I knew it would take time for him to come. 

I got the message on my phone now at 1% that he was in the hospital, but I had no idea where. I walked to Urgence receptionist. She pointed to the patient info area, but said I needed the papers. 

As I waited for the doctor to finish processing, one of the nurses, a young male offered me coffee.

The male nurse who gave me my tetanus shot said, "She probably wants tea."

"You must think by my accent, I'm English, but I'm Swiss. I know I don't sound Swiss."  

He laughed in agreement.

Some 19 hours after I entered the hospital, the receptionist showed me where I could find my husband. I don't think he ever looked so beautiful. Our communications had been limited by my rapidly reduced battery on my phone.

I know their are staff shortages and if I were having a heart attack, the response would have been faster. Those shortages must add to the sharp tones of the nurses. 

In the car on the way home, I commented that it would have been nice like on the early ERs George Clooney had been one of the doctors.

Rick pointed out he was, on the back of one of The New Yorkers.

Check out my husband's dueling blog at https://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.com/