Ouch, That Fucken Hurts!

Ouch, That Fucken Hurts!

It was 9.30am and I hadn’t even finished reading my emails. Beck’s got the week off, so I was feeling pretty relaxed about it all, not that I really act or work any differently whether Beck is there or not. It just takes me back to the days when I was used to working on my own, was my own boss. This working with someone has its emotional drawbacks, or is that, this working with someone who is my boss has its emotional drawbacks? 

Suddenly, I got a shooting pain in my back, lower left side. I headed to the toilet, where the pain increased to a level where I didn’t think I was going to survive it, to a point that I momentarily wondered if I needed an ambulance and wondered how I was going to make it out of the cubicle. Was I going to call out help the next time I heard someone come in? I felt hot, I sweated profusely, I felt like all of my pores where standing up in hard Goosebumps. My mouth went dry, I felt like I was going to be sick. Then I was sick. Twice. Eventually, what seemed like an hour, probably just ten minutes, or so, the pain subsided and I tentatively headed to the sinks. I looked like a corpse in the mirror, all the colour had drained out of my face.

I headed home.

And while the pain subsided, it didn’t disappear completely, it remained as a low level ache. Later, in the afternoon, around 3pm, it started to become more painful again. I tried lying on the floor in the lounge room, but I started to shiver. The day was cold. I built a fire, but the pain got worse. So, I changed my clothes and headed to Emergency at St Vincent’s.

There, actually, weren’t that many people waiting ahead of me, two, or three. By the time I got to the Triage nurse, the pain had gone.

So, I only had to wait half an hour, or so, to begin with.

There were all the people coming in for Steven Wong, who was on his last breath in one of the rooms. At some point in the three hours I was there, there was a code blue in emergency and I thought of Steven and whispered goodbye.

There was the cute Indian/Sri Lankan boy who’d injured his foot, whose hot mate kept making eyes at me. Okay, he looked at me a couple of times and it may have been wishful thinking on my part, but I’m sure I’ve seen him at 80. You should have seen his arse in his tight, black track suit pants. Woof! There was the nice middle aged couple from the bush, the husband of which had cancer. It seemed so sad, they had the rest of their lives together, just when they were probably free to enjoy it. The sad expressions on their faces were quietly devastating. The triage nurse called him brave. There was the nuff nuff guy who had swallowed some poisonous chemical to prove it wasn’t harmful to him, who’d been brought in by his employer who was worried about some liability, no doubt.

There was the sexy Turkish boy, who was just in the waiting room, who looked like he had a fist in his jeans, who had a beanie pulled down over his handsome face.

I told the triage nurse my story. She took all my details, most of which she had from my infected elbow a few years ago. I pissed in a plastic jar which the nurse was going to test after she had seen to those who were waiting, all two of them, by that stage. She wanted me to stay to see the doctor, but I was keen to go, so the urine test was somehow the compromise. Waiting was the old queen who was just in for attention, I’m sure. And the young blond woman who cried as she spoke to the nurse, who leant through and held her hand and told her it would be all okay. And finally she was off to test my urine.

The lovely old Asian couple came in and sat with me, smiling when I said I had already been seen to and that they were next.

Then there was the ranga bitch who pushed in saying she suffered from asthma and was having trouble breathing, who was told she would be seen straight away, who then got on her mobile phone and chattered to three different people while she was waiting. Fuck you lady, I thought, you’re not having too many breathing difficulties, you’re in a hospital now, you can get in line. I’m getting my results before you, if you can yabber away on your mobile phone, I’ve been here for three hours.

But, the triage nurse saw me first. There was a small amount of blood in my urine, but as the pain had gone, they let me go.

I should have stood up for the cute old couple who were really next, I thought, as I headed out into the day. Some people, I thought.