day 2: the corridor

My eleven-year-old is scheduled to take the entrance exams for seventh grade. I call my husband at 5:00am to ask another neighbor to take her to the exams venue, reminding him to prepare pencils, refreshments, and her exam permit.  I can only hope that she passes.  After that, he will feed, bathe and dress the four-year-old and take her with him to meet me at the hospital.

The ward has run out of blankets.  Ate Malou is using the blanket from the emergency room, and the nurse tells us to have someone bring a blanket and pillows.  I send my husband a text message, asking him to bring plastic spoons and forks, paper plates, bottled water, alcohol, and towels.  I go down to buy adult diapers.

In the meantime, the ward is waking up.  The watchers have started their noisy exodus from the rooms, to queue at the single bathroom.  The sign at the bathroom says bathing time is only at 6:00-8:00 am.  They came with pails and basins, to start washing up and to wash their patients.  One ward contains about thirty patients.  I think there were four wards for women.  Aside from us, there were two other patients in the corridor.

Ate Malou's bed is almost opposite the stock room.  This is where they keep the oxygen tanks, various metal tubes and contraptions which must be the accessories of an orthopedic ward, and the huge garbage bins.  The watchers now troop to the stock room, bringing their trash.  Soiled diapers, bandages, food containers.  The smell was far from pleasant.

The breakfast cart arrives.  The coffee is in a huge kettle, which you could pour on your own.  The patient gets one piece of bread and one boiled egg.  Because we didn't have a coffee mug, we didn't get coffee.  My last meal was lunch the previous day, but I am not hungry.  I had to go to the bathroom, though, but the line is still long.

The guard starts making the rounds to make the watchers leave.  The charts have notes on who needs watchers and who doesn't.  It is very hot in the wards.  When the doctors arrive to make their rounds, they come with a dozen interns in tow.  It gets very crowded and noisy.

I finally get a chance to go to the bathroom.  There are two cubicles.  The first one has a clogged toilet bowl, and the watchers use it for bathing and washing plates.  The single faucet is at knee level.  You have to squat in front of the toilet bowl to use it.  There is no basin or pail or tabo; you bring your own.  The curtain for the cubicle is a garbage bag cut in half and strung in twine, and it is full of holes.  If you plan to take a bath, you forget your dignity.  The second cubicle has the toilet, which, thankfully, flushes.  It has a shower curtain too, but it is gray and slimy.  I ask a woman where they brush their teeth.  She gives me a strange look and points to the first cubicle.  How stupid of me to expect an actual sink.  There are cleaners, and they do try to keep the bathroom clean, but there are just so many people and not all of them are careful.  For the most part, it is the watchers who try to keep the place as close to decent as possible.  I decide to hold my water.    

People stop to talk to us, asking us what happened, sharing stories of their own patients, telling us how long they have been in the hospital.  I go to the nurse and ask when Ate Malou's leg will be put in traction.  She says we have to be patient because there are no available beds, and her current bed doesn't have the required metal bar where they'd hang her leg.  The nurse sounds ill-tempered and I decide to hold my tongue too.  I figured it's not a good idea to get into an argument when you haven't slept, haven't eaten, and haven't used the bathroom.

Ate Malou's niece arrives before lunch to relieve me, and my husband arrives shortly after to pick me up.  He has our four-year-old with him, and she has a takeout bag from Jollibee.  She tells me that's her breakfast.  We buy takeout food from another Jollibee, and head home.

We arrive in the early afternoon, I take a two-hour nap, and start straightening the house.  We have a mountain of unwashed dishes.  I do the laundry, pick up the scattered Dora VCDs, and think about dinner.  I also think about the next day.  My husband cooks sauteed cabbage and fish, his first effort in about five years, and my four-year-old refuses to eat.

I try not to worry too much, but it can't be helped.