I am riding in the back of an ambulance. The red and white rig is racing through otherwise quiet and bucolic streets to a local hospital’s emergency room.
My loved one is beside me, on the ambulance stretcher, curled up, and clinging to life. He’s nearly completely covered with blankets provided by the attendants. All I can see is his frightened and pleading eyes.
We get to the ER. The ambulance attendants and I jump out. They pull the gurney out of the back of the rig and wheel it through the ER doors.
I look at my loved one. Now his eyes have a tiny twinkle of hope, but it flickers out quickly. He’s so spent, too exhausted to even lift his head and look around.
The attendants nod to me, a silent 'good-luck' gesture, and leave.
My loved one and I are left there in the hall. Doctors and nurses whiz past us. Some glance at us, but all of them keep walking past.
This is weird, I’m thinking --
Isn’t someone supposed to be helping us?
Registering us?
Performing some sort of ER triage?
Surely, my loved one would soon be identified as needing immediate and urgent care. Now that we’re here, that’s what will happen, right?
At last, a nurse approaches us. She asks a few questions, glances briefly at her new patient. She hands me papers.
“Fill these out and someone will be right with you,” she tells me as she walks away.
Excellent, I think, now, we’re finally moving in the right direction.
I peek through pastel-colored curtains and see other patients in beds and on stretchers. They, too, need desperate care.
Their loved ones are in plastic chairs, hunched over, eyes downcast.
The doctors and nurses all seem to be moving with purpose. At first I was thinking, ‘well, they must be busy with the other patients.’ But then I keep watching and they’re ignoring the others, too.
I watch the hospital staff again. They seem to be fussing with paper work and conferencing amongst themselves.
What’s going on here?
A panic starts to bubble in my gut. It flutters up my throat and I cry out,
‘Can’t someone please help us? Just look at him, please, he needs help!’
A doctor reacts and heads my way.
I pull off the blanket so he can get a better look.
There, on the stretcher, is the appaloosa colt, shivering, nickering faintly, dying.
The doctor presses his lips together, shrugs his shoulders, glances at his clipboard, and moves on.
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