Sunday fun, part 3

About 1 am, I guess
On entry into the hospital I am once again made highly aware of the Simpsons night shirt that I am wearing. The eyes of what seem like a hundred drunks and thugs alight upon me. I know I am also snow-white pale. I take the denim jacket that Red had draped over my shoulders and put it on properly.

I don't know how long we wait in reception, but I know that by the time we have seen the triage nurse (and answered all the same questions yet again) it is about 1.30 am. She is tall and slim with dark hair [apparently she was blonde, though that's not how I remember her] and glasses and the sort of shoes only ever worn by people who are on their feet all day. She sends us back into reception to wait for a doctor to call us. We sit...

The wait is interminable, and I bide my time by staring at the red splashes of vomit on my shoes and the ends of my jeans. Red buys me a bottle of water from the 24-hour kiosk (after being told it's now okay for me to drink), but it's too cold to drink more than a tiny sip. I also make several trips to the bathroom, which is conveniently very nearby. I'm sure you'll be pleased to know I also have the sense not to get down on my hands and knees in such an unclean environment. (For all the cleaning that goes on there, basic problems like blood on the armrest of chairs still exist.) Fortunately, I don't need to kneel anyway, for now my body wants to emit from its other end. I use the toilet with embarrassing frequency, every time shitting through the eye of a needle.

While on one of my bathroom visits, I moisten some hand towels to dab on my face and neck to keep me awake. I'm exhausted from wanting to sleep as well as from the energy used thus far into the evening.

People come and go: an old woman in a wheelchair with an obviously very painful leg; a young lad holding a white towel to his eyes and with damp marks on the knees of his grey sweatpants; a woman with a massive black eye, accompanied by her man. I also see a girl who works in our local convenience store. She walks past two or three times, and later I see that it seems she is there with a few family members.

2.30 am Monday morning
The wife goes to the bathroom and I see someone who has been waiting longer than us approach the reception counter. She asks how much longer she will have to wait. This doesn't bode well. She's told she's the next to be called, but I have no idea how long after her we came in. On Red's return I ask her to find out. "There are three more before you," she's told. "The person at the top of the list has been waiting two and a half hours." From that we deduce that it'll probably be another 45 minutes or so before we get seen.

Conversation is limited. Red and I are both exhausted. She'd not slept well the night before so was hoping to catch up Sunday night. Oops. I continue my regular bathroom trips while we wait and wait. And we people-watch and discuss what we see under our breath and mostly in Italian, so as to avoid being caught out. But we didn't bitch too much; that would be rude.