An Evening at A&E

We had a small emergency last night.  Michael, at 4, is not terribly coordinated.  (I, at 38, am not either, but that's beside the point).  There was water on the bathroom floor, and little Michael, trying to climb into the bath, slipped and bashed his chin on the side of the tub.  This resulted in an inch-long gash which bled profusely over his tiny naked person.

It is with some trepidation that I bring my beloved bleeding offspring to the emergency room.  Our friend Johnathan is kind enough to drive us. In the car, Michael has calmed down somewhat and only occasionally produces a tortured sound when I dab at his chin with a wet washrag, now bloodstained and cold.  Why I haven't thought to put some more appropriate dressing on his wound is a mystery.

St. George's A&E department is just about everything I'd imagined the NHS to be.  The queue for registration is 10 deep.  Over there is an intoxicated Pakistani who falls out of his wheelchair to crack his skull on the snack machine.  A bystander attempts to lift him back into the chair while a slim, pretty nurse makes a halfhearted attempt to talk him in.  I suspect he speaks no English.  

A teenage mother of two in dilapidated Ugg boots and a dirty track suit curses at everyone and at no one in particular for allowing the drunk man to flop about the room.  "I'm not havin' it!" she shrieks, accompianied by various colloquialisms.  It is difficult to take seriously one so young.  It is a Vicky Pollard moment and Michael stares, wide-eyed; he is in the scene, it swirls around him and over him, but he is somehow separate from it, non-combatant.  An observer.

Michael's chin is bleeding again and as I turn to wipe it, the young mother in the tracksuit finishes registering, and the mainspring of her anger over the drunk spends the last of its energy in a volley of obscenities as she moves off.  It is now our turn, but there is a woman lying on the floor near the registration desk.  "Do you know that there is a woman lying on the floor?" I ask the clerk.  

"Yes," she replies with a knowing smile and a slight shake of her head that suggest the prostrate woman may be a regular.  "She told me she was going to lie down."  The clerk is remarkably friendly, relative to those I've encountered in my limited experience with hospital registration clerks.  I wonder whether it's because although I'm obviously a foreigner, I'm clearly one who is likely to pay taxes and contribute to the NHS.  I wonder if she's as friendly to the Pakistani, or to the floor-hugger.

Forms completed, I am instructed to take Michael into the Pediatric A&E, a separate area from the chaotic main waiting area.  Although it is devoid of the drunks and vagrants which inhabit the main area, it is instead absolutely heaving with children, parents, double and triple buggies, toys, bags.  It is a large room and it overflows with life.  The children cry or laugh or stare vacantly into the middle distance, but the adults appear uniformly unhappy.  There are 17 patients in front of us I am told by a nurse, and the wait is likely to be at least two hours.  She looks briefly at Michael's chin and makes a sympathetic noise.

I find a narrow perch for Michael on a bench and stand guard nearby.  He gives a book he's found to the little girl next to him and she reads it haltingly.  A woman with a small and tired-looking child on her lap moves aside a bit to let me sit.  I read to Michael and to the little girl whose name is Shayla.  She is seven.  Ten minutes pass, then twenty.  We have just started our third book, a book of poorly-rhymed and arrhythmic story-poems about teddy bears when the sympathetic nurse calls Michael's name.  She beckons us into a small examination room, asks a few questions about what happened.  She appears visibly relieved that she won't have to involve social services.

I have expected that stitches will be the outcome, though I haven't told Michael this, but Gerry the nurse delivers unexpected good news.  Not only will they use glue rather than stitches to put my Humpty back together, but also she can perform the procedure on her own, and can do it for us in short order.  Back to the waiting area, where my suddenly high spirits are only slightly dampened when I discover that our seats have been taken.

Moments later, Gerry comes for us again and takes us to a bed in a curtained-off area.  Michael begins to whimper a little as we walk, but doesn't cry.  I lift him onto the gurney and continue reading bad bear poetry as Gerry pastes him back together and calls him "baby" affectionately.  I am reminded of the time my monther passed out while my thumb was being stitched back together after an incident involving a red pepper and a large chef's knife, and I am glad that Michael will not need any injections.

His chin now back in one piece, Michael scuplts pretzels into letters by nibbling strategically, and thanks to Gerry we are home by 9:00.  There will probably be a scar, but there will be no hospital bill, no insurance forms, no copayments.

I wonder how the Pakistani fared.