If you’re going to fall over and fracture your shoulder, then try not to do it on a freezing Saturday evening in January. That would be my advice, anyway, especially if you’re a month short of your 86th birthday. Sitting in the waiting room in the emergency department of Russells Hall hospital, Dudley, I told my dad that his timing stank. He nodded miserably, offering no defence.
He took his tumble sometime in the afternoon. I always beg him to carry his mobile at all times, in case this happens. He rarely complies, but on this occasion he had, if only by accident. It was in his pocket; he had been wondering where it had got to. It was only when it buzzed that he realised it was there, the lucky devil. If it hadn’t been, I would be writing something different now, or probably not writing anything at all.
As it was, a friend came, rang 999 and was told the ambulance could take hours, but it turned up very quickly. By the time I got there, the admin had been done. With the triaging out of the way, I could settle in with him for some serious waiting. The waiting room filled up; the predicted waiting time on the screen ticked up. Seconds and minutes ticked by, yet the end of the wait moved further way. Immutable laws of physics were being breached.
We went for a CT scan, and then an X-ray, and then back to the waiting room. Now, gone midnight, it was really packed. My favourite line from anything I read last year was in a book by the great baseball coach Joe Maddon. I think about this line most days. Talking about what he had loved about the years he had spent in the corner of a dugout night after night, Maddon said: “There’s a lot going on there, brother. There is a lot going on.”
There was a lot going on here. A woman who I deemed looked a bit worse for wear saw me struggling with the wheelchair, sprang to her feet and said: “Here you are, love. I’ll make you some space.” An older woman with a hoarse voice wearing a dressing gown talked at me, then to me, then with me, about football. Some coppers walked by, escorting a bloke with blood pouring out of his nose and from other bits of his head. I wondered if he had finished runner-up in a fight. Or perhaps he had won the fight and the runner-up hadn’t made it this far. Or he hadn’t been in a fight at all; he had been assaulted. It was difficult to tell from his manner. In films and stuff, people’s faces give more away than they do in real life.
Three neatly turned out elderly people sat opposite me, smiling amiably. None of them looked unwell or distressed in any way. Their general demeanour suggested they felt it was as good a way as any of passing a Saturday evening. There was a young woman accompanying her boyfriend. I couldn’t discern what he was in for, but he looked rather shocked about whatever it was. She wore tracksuit bottoms and had sliders on her feet, plus big lips and eyelashes and lots of makeup. A name was called from the door to the room in which the doctors and nurses awaited. All three of the not-unhappy elderly people filed through the door together. Odd. Yes, there was a lot going on here.
At last, our turn came. The doctor was a very young lad who was nice, but could be of limited assistance. Yes, the shoulder was broken and no, there wasn’t much they could do other than put it in a sling. Yes, we would be discharged now and no, he wasn’t sure what would happen then. “I’m new,” he shrugged. “I’m not sure how it works around here.”
He assured us we would get a call from the fracture department “within a week”. I asked him if they had our phone numbers. He went off to check and came back with a crumpled scrap of paper, which looked very losable to me – but whatever, it was home time.
Our friends in the waiting room waved us off. The girl with the eyelashes and the bewildered boyfriend looked at the floor. It was 2am. I had to leave Dad by the door while I ran into the freezing night to retrieve the car from the far end of the car park. It took a while. By the time I returned, I saw that the girl with the eyelashes, seeing him shivering, had found a blanket and, with unspeakable tenderness, wrapped him up. I felt like collapsing into her arms, sobbing with gratitude and apologising if I had judged her negatively in any way. But I just croaked some thanks and off we went.
The following day, we considered the situation and reached the conclusion that it was bleak. He was confused, in pain and quite unable to do much for himself at all. He said: “Well, someone will just come, won’t they?” I laughed derisively at this preposterous notion. But, actually, what’s so mad about the idea? All in all, the system had kind of worked. An ambulance came, the paramedics were great, as was everyone we engaged with at the hospital. X-rays were taken and doctors were consulted. You would have thought that was the hard bit. So what’s so hard about the hospital dropping the GP an email, and the GP getting a nurse to pop round, and then something, anything, being in place?
Eventually, advised by two GPs I happen to know, after a lot of time fighting automated voice systems and so on, things started happening. Nurses came and his GP turned up. A bed in a sweet community hospital was found, albeit an hour away. The fracture clinic at the original hospital did get in touch and yes, he has an appointment but no, the X-rays can’t be sent to a clinic nearer him. Different health authority, you see.
So now, 10 days on, he’s in a nice place, albeit in the middle of nowhere, but confused and distressed about what’s going on. As am I, really.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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