Civitas

Not finding her familiar torso beside me in bed when I reached out for her, I sprang to my feet and rushed to the bathroom to discover her lying there conscious on the floor distraught and blood-stained.

Feeling nauseous, she had got up to go to the bathroom but had fainted there, falling on her face and cutting open her nose and lip, with a nice shiner rapidly developing.

I telephoned our local NHS surgery in the hope it might put us in contact with a doctor who would visit my wife. A recorded message gave me an out-of-hours emergency number to ring which I duly did.

I should have known not to harbour any but modest expectations about the level of service we would be likely to receive at the hands of the NHS when the operator with whom I was connected proceeded to ask several questions, before being willing to put my request through to a doctor whom, she said, would ‘phone back.

“What is your wife’s first name?” was the first question she asked, after it was established I was calling about her and not me. “Sue” I replied. “What?” came back the operator’s puzzled reply. “Susan” I responded by way of clarification, since, from the accent and divulged name of the operator, it was clear to me she was not a native-born English speaker. “Is your wife’s first-name ‘Sue’ or ‘Susan’?”, the operator demanded to know in a voice now charged with some element of impatience at my having given her such seemingly inconsistent information.

Managing to control my mounting annoyance with the stupidity of the red-tape through which I was being increasingly tied up while watching my wife lying on the floor in a distressed condition, I eventually managed to answer all the questions to the satisfaction of the operator who informed me a doctor would soon call back.

One eventually did but not until several hours later, as I was to discover when much later I dialled 1471. I did so, however, only after having waited patiently in vain for that call for some time, we decided to try the number of a private emergency doctor who, upon hearing the cause and condition of my wife, advised we dialled 999 for an ambulance which we duly did.

An ambulance arrived very soon after. My wife and I have nothing but praise and admiration for the speed and quiet efficiency with which the ambulance crew brought my wife into the accident and emergency of a local NHS hospital accompanied by her husband.

We arrived shortly before 4.00am. Sadly, it was only then our real ordeal began.

My wife was initially attended by a surly unsmiling male Scottish nurse who seemed to have wandered in as an extra from the set of ‘Trainspotting’. While, doubtless, he did all he was supposed to do efficiently enough, including fitting into my wife's arm a device for receiving intravenous fluid and injections, he never once made eye-contact with her or me or told either of us his name. He disappeared at the end of his shift without informing us he was going.

Those who have ever had the misfortune of needing to attend an A & E unit of an NHS hospital at night will know what a motley assortment of weirdos inhabit them at that unearthly hour. I refer here, of course, not just to some of their staff.

Drunk and menacing men, sporting various sorts of injuries consistent with having earlier been in a fight, career around the cubicles unaccompanied, while dishevelled and scantily dressed young women carry out shouting matches with their estranged lovers on their mobile-phones that they are supposed not to use but which the nursing staff lack courage to tell them to stop using. “You’re going off to Melissa's!. You’re going off to the blackgirl!” was the not entirely edifying refrain with which my wife and I were repeatedly entertained echoing in the A & E unit from the voice of a young white girl who comported about the unit in a manner reminiscent of Laurence Oliver’s Richard lll.

My wife lay waiting in discomfort for several hours on a trolley/bed in a cubicle in the A & E unit. When, after a time, I went to enquire at the central desk at which several nursing staff idly sat chatting and joking about the whereabouts of the nurse who had previously been attending my wife, I was told he had gone home and that responsibility for my wife's care was now a ‘team effort from here on in’.

I was also told a doctor would shortly come to see her. None did.

Just before 8.00 am, after nearly four hours wait, a doctor briefly appeared at my wife’s cubicle. After examining her, the doctor said my wife needed an X-ray to see if she had fractured any bones.

The doctor left shortly thereafter, nee'er more to be seen by either of us.

Shortly thereafter, a nurse appeared who told us that, because of a high enzyme reading revealed in a blood-test taken earlier by the Trainspotter, it would be necessary for my wife to wait eight hours to undergo a second blood-test. No explanation was volunteered by the nurse as to why this second test wss necessary, and, when my wife asked why, the nurse said she would ask a doctor to come and explain.

We were also told that my wife could no longer stay in the A& E unit but would shortly be transferred to a bed in a neigbouring emergency ward. We were told that the only bed available there was in a male ward but that one in a female ward would become available a mere ten to fifteen minutes after her transferral to the male one.

Because she was feeling acutely nauseous and had earlier suffered an attack of diarrhoea, my wife understandably preferred being assigned a bed in a same-sex area, as did I.

Since the A & E unit was practically empty, and since we had been told a bed in the female area would become available only fifteen minutes after one was available in the male area, I approached the nurse who had told my wife she must leave the A & E unit to enquire if she could be allowed to stay there until the promised bed in a female only area of the emergency ward became available.

“We don’t’ really need your wife’s bed here”, the nurse replied. “The reason she can no longer stay here is that we need to meet a target.”

“Oh”, I replied, the scales finally falling from my eyes . “I am only interested in my wife’s welfare, not in helping you and your colleagues meet your targets. Can you please tell me your name and let me write it down, plus what you have just told me. I am asking for it because I am a journalist and would like to write about what you have just told us afterwards.”

At mention of my declared intention, it was as if a panic-button had been pushed deep somewhere in the innermost recesses of the command centre of the hospital. A few minutes later, a very officious-looking woman in a suit turned up who introduced herself to us as the hospital’s Director of Nursing Services. She told us she had been informed we were dissatisfied with the quality of treatment, and she informed us that, if we wished, we could later make a formal complaint about it.

I said I did not want to make a complaint but did not see why my wife had to be transferred to a male part of a ward, given we had been informed that a clearly more suitably located bed would be available shortly after.

The Director of Nursing Services then told me there were no specially designated sex-specific parts of the emergency ward, contrary to what the nurse had earlier told us, but only vaguely male and female areas. When I said I didn’t care, but only wanted to wait until a bed became available in a female area, as had earlier been indicated would shortly become available, the Director of Nursing informed us that beds could not be assigned on that basis and that the nurse in question had only been expressing a wish such a bed be available not promising one, something which previously we had been.

When I said my wife would prefer to wait in the A& E unit until a bed became available in an appropriate part of the emergency ward, we were informed no such bed was available, as we had earlier been told there would be. We were also informed by the Director of Nursng Services that we had earlier been offered a choice to stay in the A & E unit should we rather, an option we had not earlier been offered.

At this point, a new doctor appeared to inform my wife that the reason a second blood-test was needed was to rule out any possible heart damage, in other words to rule out the possibility she had suffered a heart attack. While the doctor was still there, the Director of Nursing Services re-entered the cubicle to inform us no bed was any longer available in any part of the emergency ward.

My wife replied she did not mind but complained of feeling cold. We had earlier been told the A& E unit had to be kept cool to reduce the risk of germs being transmitted. But I pointed out to the Director of Nursing Services that no one had put back on my wife’s pyjama top which had been removed when she was taken for Xray.

I was abruptly told by the Director of Nursing Services to put the top back on myself. Since my wife’s arm had by then been connected to a re-hydration drip, I asked for her pyjama to be put on by a nurse.

In an exasperated tone, the Director o Nursing Services proceeded to push past me as I was reaching for the top, saying, ‘I am a nurse. I will put it on.’. As it turned out, this required my wife being disconnected from the drip. So, in the end, the procedure had to be carried out by a uniformed member of the nursing staff, and not by the Director of Nursing Services.

I could go on and recount other further unsatisfactory incidents that happened during the course of that night.

Fortunately, my wife had not broken anything, nor, as was feared, had she suffered a heart-attack. She had only succumbed to a bad case of food-poisoning, something established only after the second blood-test which was given shortly after noon.

My wife was discharged from hospital around 2.00 pm. We emerged into the spring sunlight, my wife bruised and exhausted, but relieved she had suffered no worse misfortune than bruising and that the episode had been caused by nothing worse than a bad case of food poisoning from a dodgy lunch at a restaurant earlier the previous day.

At the same time as my wife and I left the hospital, the Chancellor rose in the House to inform it and the nation about all the wonders he was continuing to perform in the NHS and other public services through continuing to pump ever-increasing sums of money into them.

Little did I realise when I lay down to go to sleep the previous evening that I would, before day-break the following day, be taught a valuable practical lesson about public-sector financing.

What I would learn is that, in the end, what matters in relation to public expenditure s not how much is spent but how wisely it is spent.

I was further taught how poorly public sector money is all too likely to be spent on public services, like health and education, while they remain state-monopolies who can treat those whom they are supposed to serve like the helpless supplicants they remain as long as these services continue to enjoy monopoly status.

I am hoping it will be a long time before my wife again decides to be a lady who lunches. Doubtless, by then, if she ever does, a future Labour Chancellor will have succeeded in depriving her of the wherewithal to be one!

I suppose there are some health benefits that only Labour governments can deliver!