The Nevada Sagebrush

Scene in emergency waiting room reminds onlookers to be thankful

By: Memo Sanchez

Monday, November 9, 2009 - 7:50 PM

Memo Sanchez

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had been discharged from the ER. She was in the waiting room, shrieking and yelling hysterically on her phone at her significant other.

She was so loud security had bolted to the scene immediately to monitor the cacophony that had been resonating all the way down to radiology.

I was sitting behind the counter in my hospital uniform, listening intently. He was a drug user. He had no job, no ambitions and no means to even support himself, let alone enough to provide for this woman, her son or his addictions.

He had just spent all of their money on his drugs, leaving her with close to nothing to feed her family or to take the bus home from the hospital.

She wore a mask of painful urgency on her precociously aged face, the expression of a sick mother anxious to get home to her children.

I immediately began to wonder how she was going to pay for her hospital bill.

Even the most routine procedures in the emergency room cost an arm and a leg (so to speak), and she didn’t have insurance.

No one seemed to mind her noise in the least. Everyone just feigned carrying on their usual business as if they weren’t surreptitiously listening just like I was, as if the scene wasn’t actually happening, as if she were some sort of ghost whose shouting couldn’t be heard.

Everyone in the waiting room who had been eavesdropping knew her situation was precarious. The thought of intruding on her for the sake of one’s own tranquility seemed too minuscule and insensitive to justify doing it, so she went on with her shrieking and ranting, on the verge of tears.

There’s always a certain suspense to each patient’s situation; a discomforting and untold story that tugs at your sympathy. Sometimes it even breaks your heart as you witness people who trudge through their difficult lives day in and day out.

The complaints about wait times always cease when such incidents happen. Everyone is compelled into remaining content with what they thought was a dramatic and ungodly inconvenience in their life, which, in comparison to what this woman was facing, is nothing at all. Their wait time becomes just a blip on the radar compared to the apocalyptic doomsday they made it seem like before she started shouting.

It’s like everyone all of a sudden realizes just how good they have it, as if the dark and portentous clouds part, and the waiting room silently rejoices in the renaissance of their kismet.

At the end of each 12-hour shift at the emergency room, I go home with the realization of how fortunate I am to have the life that I do. As the stress of fall semester weighs on all of our shoulders, the adversity of being a student begins to rear its ugly head.

However, let us not forget that no matter what challenges we face in life, someone else out there always has it worse. A short time later, security had to intervene. The woman hung up her phone, ceased her shrieking, and reluctantly stormed out of the hospital and into the icy Reno night.

Memo Sanchez would like to remind everyone that a Memo a day keeps the doctor away. Reach him at perspectives@nevadasagebrush.com.