The story of my broken leg (part 2)

Arriving at hospital I am put on a table and doctors cut off my trousers and boots. An English-speaking doctor arrives and tells me he's taking me to have a pin put in my foot. I am being wheeled around, having an x-ray done, in an operating room, then back in the x-ray room. I am put in a corridor and a policeman appears and asks me what happened. I mumble something about not knowing Italian, and he tells me to say whatever I can. I say something about a car turning, then trail off, dozy and confused. Then I can see E at the end of the corridor. I'm really fretting because they took off my bra to put on the surgery gown and I'm being carted around with my skanky greying bra in my hand. "My bra, take it away" I beseech E. "I'll give it to Maria" he says, and I see Giorgio and Maria standing at the other end of the corridor looking uneasy. They come over and give me a kiss on the cheek. Then all three of them are told to leave. 'Bye' I say confusedly.

I am wheeled to another part of the corridor. There is a temporary camp of beds and stretchers, about 15 people in all. Suddenly from having loads of busy people in white coats around me there is no-one, just a bunch of people hooked up to painkillers and worried only about their own disasters. I start crying silently. After a while a kind-looking man who also has his leg up on a pillow catches my eye. He looks like he is crying too. He gives me a wavery sort of smile, and I feel a bit better that there is at least someone who is on my side. The night in the coridor passes very slowly. The doctors and nurses seem to have better things to do than come and visit us misplaced patients and when the painkillers wear off the wait for someone to show up is interminable.

The night becomes the morning but it all seems the same as there are no windows and the light is kept on 24 hours. I only know it's morning because I wake up to people eating breakfast around me. I was asleep when it was handed round and now the nurse tells me there isn't any left. Hours pass. E phones me, tells me he can't come until this evening because there is no-one to take his place at the pizzeria. Lunchtime comes and I am asleep again. Again, they will not give me lunch when I ask for it later. But I don't really care, I just want to be out of the corridor. The old man in the bed next to me keeps trying to get up to go for walks, leaning heavily on my bed, dangerously close to my leg. I am trying to remeber the polite form in Italian to ask him to be careful but I can't. The old man the other side of me is making a massive fuss, demanding a hospital transfer. The nurses get so fed up with him they eventually more or less stop coming to check on us altogether. We form our own support group, with those more mentally in check keeping a watch on the old people trying to escape from their beds, and those more physically able trying to put the old people back in bed and going off to try and find a nurse for people in need of painkillers.

E arrives at 11pm on the last bus. He phones me from behind the emergency room door telling me the nurses won't let him in. After 20 minutes I ask one of the support group to go and open the door. He does so and E enters, and is viciously scolded by a nurse who spots him when he is halfway across the room. She lets him pass in the end. I ask him to bring me some food because I haven't eaten all day, and he goes and fetches a bagfull of supplies from the nearest bar, which, when he returns I cannot eat because the first bite makes me feel nauseous. He is not allowed to stay long. He makes for home; there are no more buses, he will have to walk the 4km back to the village.

I am promised by the English-speaking doctor that they have 'found a place upstairs' for me and I can go tomorrow. I don't know what 'upstairs' is , but I reckon it's sure to be better than here. The second night passes much the same as the first with snatched sleep between drip changes, other peoples' moaning and old people routinely trying to climb out of their beds. In the morning, and not a moment too soon, I am taken in a lift to a ward. I am put in a corridor. Shit, I think, not again. But a nice nurse appears and explains to me that we're just waiting for someone to be picked up to go home, then I can have my own room and my own bed. Soon I will tell you all about life on the orthopedic ward, which was to be my home for the next month.

(Ps, don't worry, this was by far the most depressing chapter of the story, it gets better after this).