I am driving home from a nearby town last evening, along an unlit road, when I see in my headlights an old lady trying to crawl to safety from the road onto the grass verge. I observe that she is grasping two walking sticks which she is gamely and laboriously using to enable her efforts.
I stop, get out of the car and help her to the roadside. I ask her what has occurred to cause this scene. She tells me she has fallen over while crossing from one side of the road to the other. I examine her superficially. Her hands are covered in grazes and blood and apart from that she seems to be OK, but you can never tell in such circumstances. I know there is a small hospital in the town from whence I am returning, so I help her into the car, turn it round and head back there post haste.
I put further questions to her en route. It turns out she is on her way to her daughter’s house, which is also in the town, but she can’t recall where her daughter lives. Furthermore she can’t remember where she herself lives either. She also does not recognise any landmarks we pass on the way. Entering the town, the old lady informs me she doesn’t live there at all but somewhere in its environs, the exact location currently escaping her memory.
By this time I am under the impression she may have Alzheimer’s Disease or something, but I don’t ask her to confirm my diagnosis. This is because if she does have Alzheimer’s it might not mean anything to her and if she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s she might be offended and hit me, probably with one of her walking sticks, or maybe both of them for all I know.
I have never visited this hospital before, it being in a different county from where I live, and when we arrive there I park the car and ask her to stay there while I go inside. I reason that if she has any injuries I cannot see, it may not be a good idea to move her, and anyway she has great difficulty getting around, even with two walking sticks and me to help her. I go inside the hospital through a door marked ‘Reception’. I see signs for ‘Reception’ within and, encountering a nurse on the way, I check with her that I am proceeding in the right direction.
The nurse informs me that there is nobody at reception so there is no point in going there, whereupon I commence telling her what has occurred. She stops me in mid flow and tells me she is busy (she is talking to a man next to her and the man is holding his arm and rubbing it as if it is hurting). The man with the arm says he doesn’t mind giving me priority and I continue with my story.
When I finish my tale of woe the nurse advises me to call an ambulance.
Her advice seems superfluous to me and I ask her why an ambulance is required to take the old lady to hospital when we are in a hospital already. The nurse informs me the old lady must have an ambulance to take her to the nearest city, about 25 miles away as the crow flies. The reason for this seems to be that this hospital has no emergency facilities, and the old lady will need the services of a paramedic before being transported to a hospital which does in fact have an A&E department. Naturally, the nurse offers this opinion without bothering to examine the old lady herself.
I ask if there is anyone at all in the building who can take care of her and I receive a reply in the negative.
I do not have my cellphone with me, so I ask if I can use a hospital telephone to call an ambulance to take the old lady to hospital. I once more receive a reply in the negative, followed by a suggestion that I use my cellphone, which I have already explained I do not have with me. I consider the nurse’s responses and conclude they are less than helpful.
I put it to the nurse that surely there is at least one telephone in the hospital I can use because Alexander Graham Bell invented the device more than a century ago so they have had plenty of time to install one. I am then told not to get aggressive with the nursing staff because it will not do me any good, and anyway visitors are not allowed to use hospital telephones.
I ask her if she will call an ambulance herself but she points to the man with the arm and repeats that she is busy. I ask her if anyone else can call an ambulance and the answer is not yet and would I please wait outside with the old lady and wait for another member of the nursing staff to come out and see her. I obey this instruction merely because I wish to go outside anyway and check the signage to see whether it says ‘Hospital’ or whether it says ‘Monty Python Sketch - Filming In Progress’. I reassure myself that the sign does in fact say ‘Hospital’, and I am now thinking of reporting the ‘Hospital’ to whichever government department is responsible for monitoring flagrant contraventions of the Trades Descriptions Act.
After a while the man with the arm exits the ‘Hospital’ and tells me he is going home because the staff inside are a total waste of space.
Shortly afterwards another nurse emerges from the building, and I am more than gratified that the ‘Hospital’ employs more than one ‘nurse’. I then have a stroke of luck because it turns out nurse #2 actually recognises the old lady and says she will take her inside the ‘Hospital’, look after her needs and see that she is OK. I ask nurse #2 what is the problem with nurse #1 and nurse #2 tells me she knows where I am coming from, whatever that is supposed to imply. I thank her, get in my car and commence driving as far away from the ‘Hospital’ as is reasonably possible.
I drive very carefully indeed because I do not wish to be involved in an accident which may result in an unscheduled visit to hospital. I have suddenly become very selective about hospitals following my recent experiences with such establishments.
On the way home I am earnestly hoping I do not encounter any more old ladies with walking sticks lying in the middle of the road. Of course if I do see such a scene I will stop and render all appropriate assistance by driving them to the nearest city myself. In fact I will cram as many injured old ladies into my car as the car will hold, with or without walking sticks, including one in the boot if necessary, because if injured old ladies require assistance then they will get it from me, no questions asked. My faults, and I have too many to mention here, do not include leaving distressed persons lying in the middle of the road at the risk of being totalled by a passing car.
This includes nurses, although if it is one of their number in particular I might well be inclined to tell her I am busy and that I have no telephone, even if I do have a telephone, and that I will go home and call an ambulance to take her to the nearest city 25 miles distant, and would she please wait there until said vehicle arrives, or maybe just go fuck herself, whichever course of action she deems to be most appropriate for the circumstances at hand.