An abscessed tooth sent me to the emergency department of our local hospital at four o'clock yesterday morning. Other than for a COVID test, I had not been to the hospital in a while and I was amazed at how quiet it was there. After a brief COVID screening, registration and triage intake I was sent to a long narrow hallway with about two dozen chairs in it. Every other chair was tagged as being unavailable due to social distancing and so I sat down and waited all alone for a couple of hours. No one joined me and the silence was broken only by the squishy sound of a nurse's rubber sole shoes in another room and the solo wanderings of the hospital security guard. It was lonely.
The staff at the hospital were wonderful though and I appreciated the care and concern of all of them from triage to registration to emergency; they were unfailingly courteous, gentle and professional. When I was called from the waiting room, there were many other folks already in there as it turned out: an elderly lady who had fallen brought in by ambulance, a loud man who kept asking to go to the bathroom every few minutes, an older man in a wheelchair with swollen plastic wrapped feet who seemed to be a regular and others. All were seen to as kindly and considerately as I was.
But I did have to wait and so I had time to inspect the photos of the hospital's beginnings. We were both born in the fifties, this hospital and I. I enjoyed the photos of the auxiliary ladies and their stylish hats, shovels in hand breaking ground for the predecessor of this building that I was now in, receiving care. And as I caught a glimpse of my tired swollen face and graying hair in the glass of the photos, I reflected on all that had passed in those sixty odd years. What of all the folks that had come and sat in these chairs as my family and I had after bone breaks, seizures or accidents over the years? My husband and I had brought home two babies from this very hospital and lost one more here too. My husband's beloved mother died here not so very long ago. Our family is not the only one to have experienced so much here: joy, grief, pain, relief--- all of it.
A hospital may seem like a giant machine sometimes, cold, brittle and inhuman. But like other large buildings, schools, churches, libraries and offices, it is the people inside a building who give it its essence. The humans in my hospital were gentle and caring, funny and warm. And so I say thank you!
