Waiting at a Hungarian hospital
“Doctor, may I go home now? I cannot wait any longer,” calls an old lady on a doctor passing by on the corridor.
“I left the three children at home and I didn’t think I’d have to wait so long at the emergency.
He stops for a second: “What is it?”
She repeats her question begging for empathy.
“May I go home? What would happen then?”
“Then you would go home,” he says simply, obviously disturbed but in a rush. “I don’t know your whole story,” he cuts it short and rushes onwards.
A couple is waiting next to me.
“I will go ask for a taxi and go home,” the old lady says to us. We tell her she should talk to a nurse who obviously says she should stay and wait for the examination.
She tells me she left her grandkids at home, 5, 7 and 9 years old. Thankfully the neighbor is aware of them but the parents apparently are not around now, perhaps traveling, I figure from her words.
“Doctor, I will stay and wait,” she says as she sees the same doctor rushing by on the corridor. He doesn’t even hear her and disappears quickly again.