Sunday Night at the Emergency Room

In Squinx's 4½ years we have been spared an emergency-room visit. But in the six months since Dad's passing Mom has had to go twice.

The E.R. compels use of its complimentary valet parking, and my only complaint is the adjective "complimentary," which, like "people's democratic republic," suggests the opposite. But without any choice I meekly handed my keys over to a kid I knew I had brought no cash to tip. And so a new experience began.

Inside, according to signage, the staff doesn't like you talking on your cell phone. I think it's because most people on cell phones sound like dopes. You could have identical twins side-by-side, one on a land line and the other on a Razr, saying exactly the same things, and the wireless one would speak at twice the volume of the other and pace around like Rain Man Babbitt.

However, I learned that, if you're discreet, no one will say anything about your Bluetooth and your texting. Just, for God's sake, choose vibrate mode. Nobody in an E.R. thinks a tinny rendition of "Afternoon Delight" is funny.

it's the boredom in places like this that drives people to cell-phone diddling. That's one aspect of the emergency room you'll never see on television, the boredom. I saw one orderly at his station, desultorily browsing an Internet message board, and was tempted to yell "STAT!" just to make him jump. He might've welcomed the interruption. I doubt the hours and hours of nothing-to-do were part of his job description, and on a Sunday night there are no managers around to make work for the tedium-afflicted.

Hollywood's many renditions of the emergency room don't include the great yawning stretches of nothing-happening, or the flat expressions on most everyone's face, but one element they get right is the fetching female intern. This one chewed gum and could have passed for my daughter, if I'd started reproducing at 14 and my daughter had finished med school before high school.

Watching her and the others work reassured me that years ago, I wisely chose against a career in medicine. I would have failed at the intern stage. Reason: the parallel multitasking.

As a writer, I can go from tapping out an essay at the computer to hammering in concrete forms around the driveway, then back to writing with no confusion at all; in fact, I write better that way, engaging the physical and the mental alternately. But give me four patients with dozens of vital signs and symptoms among them, and I'm liable to send the geriatric to labor & delivery and order a CAT scan for toe fungus.

 

i might have just as much difficulty telling the various players apart. They all wear scrubs now, and even the nurses sport stethoscopes, so trying to figure out the players is harder than sorting out who's who in a pit crew. Mom, born in the 1920s, assumes all the males are doctors. I have concluded that the M.D.s are the ones who talk the least, and with one exception, I have that correct.

As we prepared to leave (Mom is fine, BTW), I overheard a doctor come as close as I imagine doctors ever get to actually chewing out a patient. A fellow who'd ambled in and taken a bed next to Mom's told the attending physician he was a Katrina displacement whose hypertension meds had run out. The doctor apparently knew more about his case than that, because he promptly replied that a) people who'd relocated after Katrina were supposed to have been looked after already; b) the emergency room was not the place to get prescriptions for chronic conditions; and c) it was the patient's responsibility to keep up with his meds, not to wait until after they'd run out and symptoms had returned. I felt like a snoop, but I had no choice other than to hear all this through the curtain, which, following his lecture, the doctor parted and walked out with a disgusted look.

Under the curtain, I noticed the man's shoes. All-leather cross-trainers, bearing the name of a professional sports star known all over the world. Easily a hundred bucks. 

Flashback to 1989: I'm interviewing a man who'd asked his fellow parishioners to help a homeless family get past the monetary "hump" of deposits and first-month's-rent that he believed was keeping them in a shelter. By the time I heard about his project, he had succeeded in getting the husband employed and the family into an apartment, so I went to see him for the story.

He spoke with unusual candor, and I had to use discretion in what I published so as to keep the writeup positive. (There are some harsh but firm realities in dealing with homeless people that most of us would be disturbed to learn.) One of his more revealing observations from working with this family -- and with others at the bottom of the income scale -- was, "Most poor people regard medical bills as optional."

Later I would learn that two out of five hospitals operate at a loss. Today, as a homeowner, I subsidize the county hospital district with more than $300 cash per year. I do not want to think about how much of that goes to cover unpaid bills.

I'll spare you the rant about how mandatory charity cheapens the act and fosters resentment on both ends. It's one of those things I prefer to ignore (one of those things you can't say) and then, in moments like Sunday night at the E.R., it slaps me in the face. I'd say the doctor I overheard felt entitled to dress down a customer he knew was unlikely to pay him for the service he was about to provide. Wouldn't you?

 

we checked mom out three hours after admission with a pain pill and instructions to take it easy. The valet stood by as I helped Mom clamber into the truck. As he handed me the keys, he asked, "Is that your momma?"

"Yes, she is."

"It's good to take care of your momma." And he trotted off to fetch the next car.

Yes, it is.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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