A day in a hospital

I was recently in the OP, blood test center and casualty of a hospital.  As I waited in each of these places along with my mother I kept noticing the others around. 


Some of them will stay with me forever like the time I was offered a sweet by a new father who didn’t know that I had just lost mine.


A young mother getting told that she needn’t worry but few more tests and scans are required before the final prognosis.  She instinctively reached out to pat the head of her child and with the other caught hold of her husband's arm. 


A patriarch is being rushed in to causality.  The stretcher is surrounded by family and close ones.  Everyone is anxious as they get told to wait outside the emergency ward.  The man's wife alone is inconsolable.  In a matter of 30-45 minutes her fears come true.  Others break down, she calls out to what looks like her eldest, whispers something and then asks to be allowed inside the ward.  After a while she emerges tells those trying to console her that everyone should be strong and do what is needed...this is what he would have done and wanted.


A young husband and wife come in with an old couple.  They the old ones are clearly lost and not at all in their comfort zone.  The young couple is very audibly arguing as to why it has become their headache to care for these two.  Why can’t that brother, the other sister and so on do this!  The old man and woman are ashamed, shaken and probably wishing they weren’t around to hear these.
As all of this and a multitude of other things happen I take to watching the hospital staff.  The new age doctors (some of them still getting trained) are stuck to their mobiles, hardly have the time to even look at patients who have asks of them.  Some of the seasoned nurses and other support team members exchange knowing looks seeing the doctors busy on their mobiles.  The senior doctors are so busy there is hardly any - 1 on 1 time with patients.  The so called assistants are supposedly doing tasks to help.  The help usually results in the names of medicines being wrong spelled, incorrect tests get prescribed.  As colleagues meet them talk about their day, their home, their family, go for breaks, food. 


As I left the hospital I wished the young mother all the courage and strength she would require. To the family who lost their elder I wished that the departed one's soul rests in peace.  The state of the old couple haunts me.  I hope the young ones they are with will have a change of heart.  Realize that had it not been for those who brought them up and are old now the young and able would have had no today.