The Emergency Room

The emergency room is not a private place. As anyone who has been in one knows, they store two patients to a room, and the rooms are generally kept open to the larger activity area. The emergency room is the sort of place where everyone’s problems hang out. If you spend enough time there you will see and here things that you’d rather not.

Some time into our stay two paramedics wheeled in an old lady and deposited her in the adjacent bed. The curtain between the beds was partly pulled so we couldn’t really see her, but we could hear everything. Over the next hour or so, her story unfolded in bits of dialog overheard and pieced together.

The elderly lady was in a wretched state. She had been sent over to the emergency room from the nursing home because she “Just wasn’t acting herself,” as someone said. The old woman had trouble speaking for herself, and this seemed due at least in part to the fact that whenever she opened her mouth deep wracking sobs would come up, like one would expect from someone who had lost everything in life.

And in a way she had. As her story came out in broken bits she told the various doctors and nurses how she had been taken out of her home in Vestal and moved to a nursing home. She had been ripped away from everything she had known and held dear. She said she hated it there, it was awful, and she wanted to go home. She wanted to go anywhere but back to the nursing home. She wanted her son.

The other half of the story I inferred. She was diabetic, and though able to remember some facts, exhibited at least mild symptoms of dementia in that she couldn’t remember certain facts (such as her sons phone number). So, being no longer able to care for herself, and her son being unable or unwilling to tend for her himself, she was shipped off to a nursing home, where she now found life unbearable.

Such devastation and brokenness strike to the heart. It is the very thing witnessed at a funeral of family where the bereaved are left alone and without hope. It is a terrible thing to witness.

“Please, please,” the woman begged. “Don’t leave me. Don’t send me back. Please, I’ll go anywhere. Don’t send me back there. I’ll stay anywhere. I’ll stay here. Please, I don’t want to go back. I want to go home. Please, I want to see my son. My son, I want my son. Please, tell my son where I am. I need my son. Please . . .”

The doctor and nurses tended as duty required, some with more compassion than others, but for each it was a duty. “How are you feeling? Where does it hurt? Why are you crying? What is your son’s phone number? I will call him.” Each had come to do their duty, and when their duty was done they left. Some probably felt at least a little sorry for her, but it quickly became clear to each of them there was nothing they could do for her. The emergency room is where you stop up wounds of the body, not wounds of the soul. They could offer no real comfort, and no hope. After about an hour a psychologist, or some such person, showed up and wheeled her away. Likely the doctor would give her a few platitudes, empty words and shallow listening before she was shipped back off to the nursing home she had begged to be saved from.

A part of me says, “How can you blame the doctors and nurses?” What can they do? There is nothing they can do. But another part of me says, “How can they stand it? How can they do it?”

The hospital staff says, “Don’t cry. Awww, don’t cry. What can I do for you?” Or, “It’s all right to cry. I cry sometimes too. It’s all right.”

But who sat down and held her hand? Who stayed there and gave her a hug and held her while she was wracked with sobs? Who answered her cry and came to stand as her advocate? Who promised to save her and protect her?

No one, of course. Because in this world we don’t do that.

“My son, my son,” she cried. “I want my son.”

There was no son for her, but they all promised to call him if she could only remember the number.