A Regretful Trip to the Hospital

A splitting scream shot out from behind me as I hanging one last ornament. Misa had been a witness but no amount of wishing could have made his arms extend any longer in that moment. We wrapped the young child balled up on the floor into our arms and did our best to examine the damage.

Blood seeped out of a cut just below his hairline on the right side of his face. It came out lightly, like the lava flow from our famous Popocatepetl on a regular day, not like one of the days it would make our windows rattle and fill the air with smoke. Just a trickling of blood. I assumed the cut wasn´t too deep. Yet, as first time parents we felt the need for a ¨professional¨ to assure us the child would be okay and to eliminate the guilt that filled us and made us see ourselves as careless parents.

Misa fired up the car while I stepped into the backseat with Camilo in my arms to continue to comfort him as he cried. We headed to the closest hospital, where we had previously encountered a process of red tape that we barely made it through. The Children´s Hospital is an old building about one kilometer from our house. We drove up into the lot, and unloaded into the emergency wing out the building. Camilo had become tranquil at this point and allowed me to carry him on my hip as we wandered about.

As we came upon the entrance, the receptionist asked what happened. I pointed to Camilo´s head and used my best Lao to explain, ¨He fell.¨ We were admitted to the building where the same conversation occurred with the next worker. Without words, she pointed upstairs. When I looked at her confused, she just motioned to Camilo and then pointed upstairs again. And so we went in that direction.

At the top of the stairs the door was labeled ¨Operation Room.¨ And before I could even realize what that could mean, a nurse had taken Camilo from my arms and took him into the room. I quickly pulled out my cell phone to dial our doctor friend in the area to gather some sort of information. I did not believe stitches necessary, I only brought him here to get looked at. For them to tell me how to treat, to make sure there was no concussion, to know what warning signs to be looking out for. As I frantically spoke on the phone, Misa was at the door of the operation room looking at me in anxiety as the nurse was ready to get the stitches at this moment. She didn’t even know his name.

I was assured by our friend that stitches would not be the end of the world and that his head wound is unlikely to cause a concussion. I hung up and followed Misa in where three nurses were holding our one-year-old son down onto the bed, already a horrific sight for us to see. When Camilo´s eyes met mine, I felt him accusing me and asking why I would let these people treat him so. We were his protectors, his nurturers. Could he ever see us that way again or would this experience traumatize us all?

One nurse escorted us out of the small room and instructed us to wait. The screams that came out when his two stitches went in were more atrocious than those of when the fall occurred and the couch corner took a piece of him. It split through the air and all the observers looked upon Misa and I standing together. We did our best to comfort one another although our relationship felt strained too. I was filled with anxiety and felt quite naive while Misa was filled with guilt and believed us to not be careful or watchful enough. Neither of us could quite see through our own momentary struggle to meet the other.

They called us in and I spoke to my baby and promised him that he was in mommy´s arms again. One nurse sat at the desk up front where he listed out all the materials used in this operation that we would need to replace. He also noted the procedure in Camilo´s hospital record book that had him listed as Lamilo and me as Jesdica. When the pen was safely resting on the desk again, he spoke to us slowly and I repeated what I could understand, ¨Go downstairs? Come back in seven days?¨ He nodded.

We walked down the stairs, both Misa and I breathing a bit more normally and we began our wild goose chase. Downstairs there were five different windows with a worker inside and we did not know where to begin. It would be simple to just walk out and have this whole matter behind us, but I knew someone would be expecting payment.

We walked up to a window with less of a line and awaited to get the attention of the teller. I passed him the paper given to us by the nurse and he just shook his head and passed it back. We made two right shifts to the next window and repeated the action at window 2. The teller handed back our paper and said, ¨Window 5.¨ We walked across the hallway to window 5 and waited in the six person line. As we approached the front of the line, new individuals simply shoved their papers through the window and stood off to the side of the line. And somehow, the teller began calling their names. Misa followed the crowd and moved out of line and pushed Camilo´s paper into their hands. It worked.

The worker circled some items and motioned us back to window 2. With Camilo still on my hip, but now with a lime sized bandage on his forehead, we shuffled back to window 2. She took our paper with some circled items and wrote in a calculator 110,000 kip (about $5). We passed her the money and then she sent us back to window 5. We returned and slipped our paper in the window without watching others do the same this time. The teller called us up and handed us a package of gauze pads and a package of butterfly bandaids. He pointed for us to trek the stairs once more.

By this point, it was becoming ridiculous and I was not sure we would ever be able to leave here again. But we walked up the stairs, back to the small room. A nurse took the packages and our papers and circled one item. In his best English he said, ¨Downstairs no have. Go outside, pharmacy. You buy. Give me.¨ This is one of those situations where it took me a lot longer to process what was being asked than it did for Misa. He explained to me that we were replacing the hospital equipment for them, but we would have to walk over to one of the fifteen pharmacies across the street to do so. He concluded by confirming that we would just get out of here.

But yet, we had to return to window 5 downstairs to prove they had received the pieces that were available. Again, we were motioned over to a window, but this time window 1. We pushed Camilo´s paper in again. He wrote something and before he could ignore me, I asked which window. Window 2 again. 20,000 kip. We paid it, we still didn´t know why. She pointed us to window 5. Out came a bottle of children´s motrin. He pointed to the pharmacies outside. We left and went home.

In all of the time at that hospital, Camilo never went before a doctor. No one checked any of his vitals. There was no conversation between a professional and ourselves. They saw an obvious need and performed a surgery without really explaining to us caretakers the what and why. Without permission. It cost us $6, most of which was replacing boxes of supplies for the two pieces that were actually used for Camilo´s case. I still have this crushing guilt, more about my decision to take him to the hospital than about the passive allowance of his injury. I am convinced we can´t keep an eye on him 24/7 and we won´t be able to save every fall, but it is in our power to react. Next time do we keep him home, take him back to this hospital, or find an expensive hospital for foreigners and allow the chasm between locals and foreigners with money to widen?