Stories from the Hospital
So I spent two days this week with a loved one in hospital in Montreal, Quebec. That was scary for a while, but the scary part is over now (knock wood) and I’m slowly coming down from all that stress. What I’m starting to remember now are the little things that happened while I was focused on my own loved one’s story. The way the first-responder firefighters switched into French to debrief the paramedics. The way the gurney’s legs retracted as the bed platform slid into the ambulance. The first intake guy at the hospital, who also talked with the paramedics in fluent French (while I, despite being non-fluent, tried to eavesdrop and read the medical notes he was making on the computer — in French)…and then came over to us and said, in a clearly non-francophone accent, “How you doin’, mate?” So completely unexpected that it almost made me laugh. The tiny room where we saw the nurse, which had a second door opening onto a big lab (?) room…where people were joking and gossiping and carrying on just as if I wasn’t sitting there next to a hospital patient and trying not to freak out. The fact that my loved one was the youngest in the waiting room by about 50 years. And then, in the ward…