Four hours
in accident
and emergency
Kenneth Roy
Last week I spent four hours in the accident and emergency unit of our local hospital – not as a patient but waiting for news of someone. I was reminded at once of the essential democracy of
A & E. Yet the inclusive spirit of Crosshouse Hospital was exceptional. At one stage the cast of characters included a monk in a habit and a prisoner in handcuffs.
The monk carried a mobile phone. Might he have been an actor in some local pageant? We are approaching the season for such diversions. I decided after further study that he was the genuine article. My illusion of that self-denying existence was shattered forever.
Do monks tweet? Is that allowed too? As the clock on the wall ticked off the unforgiving minutes, I indulged in a small fantasy of the scene in the monastic computer room after early morning prayers. 'Mornin ' all. Just had my first natter of the day with the big man upstairs, lol'.
I was unaware of a monastery in the district, but the attendance of the prisoner was easier to explain. Along John Finnie Street, past our office, Reliance vans transport their human cargo from the sheriff court to the private jail on the outskirts of town. The prisoner remained handcuffed to a uniformed escort as he bent awkwardly before the reception desk.
'Your name? Address? Postcode? Contact telephone number? Next-of-kin? Doctor? Religion?'. It is the same for all of us.
A passing nurse recognised him. 'How long are you in for?', she asked cheerfully.
As soon as the preliminaries were completed, the prisoner and escort disappeared into the treatment area beyond reception. It seems that the only way to jump the queue at A & E, assuming you are not actually breathing your last, is to arrive handcuffed.
I discovered, too, that for some people A & E is simply somewhere to go, a place in which to pass the time. Three young women – mates – arrived together and spent a pleasant hour laughing coarsely at each other's jokes.
The children accompanying a limping, stubbly-chinned type in a red tracksuit and his worn, put-upon wife or girlfriend escaped from the kiddies' quarters and romped over the benches at the obligatory screaming pitch. Occasionally, the injured daddy retreated outside for a subversive smoke. It is possible that he was secretly praying to be kept in for a few nights – in Kilmarnock prison if necessary.
The uproar of his offspring continued without relief until, finally, the mother made a desperate appeal for peace. She adopted a strategy I hadn't heard before.
'The camera's looking at you', she hissed.
It used to be the threat of the bogey man which frightened misbehaving children into silence. Not any more. He has been replaced in popular demonology by that ubiquitous weapon of the surveillance society, CCTV, an electronic bogey man of the new age. That was one of several small things I learned about the human race from four hours in A & E: far from being hostile to the all-seeing cameras tracking our every move, we find them a useful device for social manipulation and control.
I discovered, too, that for some people A & E is simply somewhere to go, a place in which to pass the time. Three young women – mates – arrived together and spent a pleasant hour laughing coarsely at each other's jokes. Their disregard for the pain and distress around them was remarkable: they might as well have been in the back row of a late-night bus or making idiots of themselves in the pub.
One of them was seen by a doctor and re-emerged after a few minutes. 'There's nothing they can do', she announced casually with a smile.
Late in the afternoon, I had to return briefly to the office and used the free-phone on the wall to contact the one and only recommended taxi firm. When I announced my destination as John Finnie Street and a woman's voice answered, 'Where's that?', I sensed that, wherever the taxi firm was based, it was not in the town nearest to Crosshouse Hospital. It turned out that I was speaking to an operator in Ayr, 15 miles away. Surprise surprise, the taxi was a no-show. After half an hour, I resorted to the bus.
After the lethargy of the waiting room, this sudden energy, people moving swiftly in every direction, was almost overwhelming.
When I got back to the hospital, a new cast of characters had assembled; I was the only survivor from the matinee. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Soon, however, I was invited to desert my familiar place in the stalls and introduced to a new environment – a place of purposeful activity. After the lethargy of the waiting room, this sudden energy, people moving swiftly in every direction, was almost overwhelming.
Much had happened. They had given my colleague a number of tests and a scan, a consultant had seen the results and pronounced them reassuring, a transfer to a ward had been arranged, the patient would continue to be monitored for 24, perhaps 48, hours.
The visitor from another planet, beamed into that waiting room at Crosshouse Hospital, would not have formed a favourable view of the human race; and it would have been necessary to explain to him the peculiar construction of the bureaucratic mind that awards a taxi service for the helpless to a company located elsewhere. But then our visitor would have been able to see what goes on inside an accident and emergency unit; he would have observed for himself its extraordinary service to humanity. Finally he would have learned, to his utter astonishment, that no-one is ever presented with a bill for this service: that it is financed through a benevolent system called taxation and available free to anyone who wishes to use it.
Before we parted, I would have taken him aside and informed him that we were fortunate in Scotland that this benefit to mankind was not threatened as it was in other parts of the alien territory known as the United Kingdom. He might well have returned to his distant planet scarcely believing our luck.
It only remains to record that the patient recovered.
Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review
