Day At The Hospital

It’s been a day at the hospital, as I took a friend home, and then took him back. I don’t really wanna go into the details here, for obvious reasons, except to say I saw an awful lot of hospital interiors today.

And I also saw an awful lot of people at the Accident and Emergency Department who I didn’t think looked all that sick. Yes, there was a car accident, and there was the older lady in a neck-brace, but there were also some people who I thought should just take a Bex and have a good lie down.

There was the young Swiss bloke, for example, who explained he had a slight temperature “and didn’t no where-else to go”. Under my breath, I whispered to my friend, “he could just go to bed and rest, and maybe take an asprin” as the fever didn’t seem to stop him making several lengthy phone calls to family friends about how sick he was.

There was also the visiting English backpacker who had a sore toe. “Does it hurt?”, he was asked. “Oh yeah, but it’s okay”. “Go home”, I said to myself…

And there was the drunken Aussie (who also spoke German for some reason) who seemed to be known by the staff by both his first and middle names. “Where do you live?” he was asked. He responded by calling a friend and I actually overheard him say, “What’s my address. My girlfriend won’t tell me”.

I couldn’t help but think how much more efficiently run the hospitals could be if a few people took on a bit of responsibility for themselves. The drunk you could kinda understand why he didn’t really have much control for his actions in the state he was in, but the other two seemed like total time-wasters.

In the midst of all this, I was sitting with my friend who is pretty sick, but hopefully on the mend. The staff at the hospital were terrific. And did I mention the doctor was really cute? :)