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Too Many Beds
Hospitals are getting more efficient these days and have cut down the time it takes to get a bed for you.
I went to visit a sick friend at the hospital the other day. I had to go to the information desk, which also handled the admitting procedure. Before I could ask what room my friend was in, the lady took down my name, age, occupation, filled out a slip and rang a bell. I was just about to tell her I was only visiting a friend when two attendants arrived with a wheelchair, placed me in and started pushing me down the hall.
“I'm not sick,” I shouted. “I'm just looking for a friend.”
“When he comes,” one attendant replied calmly, “we'll send him up to your room.”
I found myself in a small room marked “Private. Check with Nurse before Knocking.” The attendant stripped me, gave me a short nightgown that tied at the back and a water jug and turned on the television set hanging from the ceiling. “If you need anything, press the button.”
I was trying to figure how to escape by the window when Dr Ward came in with several of his students. “Thank heavens you finally came,” I exclaimed, breathing a sigh of relief.
“It hurts that bad?” he asked.
“It doesn't hurt at all.”
Dr Ward looked worried. “If you don't feel any pain, that means it's much more serious than we thought. Where did it originally hurt?”
“It didn't hurt anywhere.” I repeated, in a clear, firm tone of voice.
Dr Ward nodded sympathetically and turned to his students: “This is the toughest kind of patient to handle because he refuses to admit that he is ill. He will never be well again until he gets over the delusion that he is in perfectly good health. Since he won't tell us where it hurts, we'll have to do exploratory surgery to find out for ourselves.”
“But I don't want an operation.” I begged.
Dr Ward nodded. “No one does.”
“There's nothing wrong! Everything is in order.”
“If it was,” explained Dr Ward, writing on a chart, “you wouldn't be here.”
The next morning, two attendants arrived and placed me on a rolling stretcher. The head nurse walked along beside me.
Finally, I was wheeled into the operating room. “Wait,” I said. “I have something to tell you. I'm deathly sick, but I HAVE NO MEDICAL INSURANCE! I can't even pay for the anesthetist.” The anesthetist turned off his machine. “And I have no money to pay the doctor,” I said. They started to put the instruments away. Then I looked at the head nurse. “I can't even pay for the room.”
Before I knew it, I was back in my own clothes and out on the street, thrown there by the two attendants who had first wheeled me in. I went back to ask what room my friend was in, but the admitting clerk looked at me coldly and said, “We don't ever want to see you in this hospital again. You're sick.”