Emergency Room Read Free Page A

Diana. “Hey, have fun,” he said. “Fill out an insurance form for me, huh?”
    “How about I just lose you in the computer?” Diana stomped away, even though she was afraid. To reach Insurance, you had to go through the Waiting Room, a frightening hostile place Diana preferred to avoid.
    Inner-city patients were okay when they were confined to stretchers and surrounded by techs and nurses and doctors, stuck with needles and fastened to machines. They weren’t people then, really, but patients, which was something else altogether. Their ages and races, criminal backgrounds or tragedy or confusion blended into the bedsheets and the ward activity. They were so much cleaner, somehow, in the treatment area. Out in the Waiting Room, however, you actually had to be among them; and out there, they were not yet patients.
    Sullen, frightened, pain-ridden people sat tensely in turquoise plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Some would wait ten minutes to be seen and some would wait hours. They suffered every possible woe and wound, and had nothing to do in that Waiting Room but get angry that they had to wait.
    Sick mothers had no baby-sitters and had to bring their small children; a gunfight over a drug sale brought in the families of both the shooter and the shot; babies screamed and children whined and people missed meals and work and appointments.
    Diana passed through a sea of hostile black, Asian, Indian, Hispanic, and white faces. Again tonight there was a yawning policeman sitting next to a man in shackles. The room was so packed that Diana could not make a detour, but had to step over the man’s stretched-out legs. He smelled.
    She reached Insurance alive, however, and tried to calm herself.
    “A volunteer!” said a sexy black woman from behind a glass wall. She had fabulous fingernails and intricate hair. “Great. We’re swamped.” She actually smiled at Diana.
    Diana had learned that her name tag meant nothing. Nobody would ever call her Diana. They would just shout, “Volunteer! Pharmacy!” In spite of past experience, though, Diana attempted conversation. “I’m always surprised that Mondays are so busy,” she confided. “I thought Friday or Saturday would be the night the ER gets swamped.”
    “Nope. Nobody wants to ruin their weekend. People try to stay well or not think about it during the weekend. Monday it hits the fan.” Knika handed her a form covered with a nurse’s scribbles. “I’m Knika, Diana. You’ll help us get paper. We chase after every patient, or else find their family, and get the facts for the computer.”
    Diana felt marginally better. She would at least know how everybody got hurt.
    Knika listed the facts Diana would unearth. “Name, address, phone number, next of kin, and insurance or welfare status.”
    Immediately Diana felt worse again. She could not care less about anybody’s insurance status. At this very moment, Seth was probably assisting on a GSW. (Actually neither Diana nor Seth had ever seen a gunshot wound, but they kept hoping.) “Do they have to have insurance to be treated?” she asked.
    “Nope. This is City Hospital, honey. Everybody gets treated here, which is why it’s so crowded. If they don’t have insurance and they don’t have welfare either, write down ‘self-pay,’ even if you know perfectly well that nobody is ever going to pay the bill.”
    WILLIAMS , said the sheet which Knika thrust at her. MALE. ETOH. FISTFIGHT. BROKEN NOSE. URGENT .
    Knika picked up the phone, having finished with Diana.
    This was not what Diana considered extensive job training and she had no idea what to do next. Diana took her paper to the Admitting Nurse, whose name tag said Barbie. Diana could not imagine anybody who less resembled a Barbie doll. Nor could she imagine a Ken ever setting foot in this Waiting Room to meet her. “What do I do next?” she said to Barbie.
    Barbie was incredulous. A volunteer dared talk to her? “I’m busy,” she said sharply. (Another