32 hours and counting: A Transport Story

"What?!" My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe my ears. This can't be happening. Not for the second day in a row. I looked at Dad, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. For once, my insatiable voice had been silenced. Everything that could be said had already passed my lips. So I just sat there. In dumbfounded silence blinking back bitter, angry tears.

"Dreamer" an original cartoon by Rosie P

"I'm sorry, but we've tried contacting the bed manager, and transport won't be here before 9 tonight at the earliest. Would that be too late? It's really difficult to book for a stretcher ambulance on a weekend. Plus you have far to travel..." it was only when her voice trailed off that I became aware my eyes were throwing daggers. I snorted in disbelief, shaking my head, resisting the urge to grab her warmly by the throat.

Panic started to rise I my chest. I can't do another night. Not here, with meds so infrequently, with the constant screaming and moaning from the old lady next door. My eyes widened as another realisation hit me, like a punch in the gut. Oh god. What about my TPN?? Yesterday I got lucky as they'd over ordered my prescription, leaving me with a spare bag. The fight for fluids could take hours! My head sunk into my hands, the light stabbing my eyes like a thousand white hot needles. A migraine was brewing. The calm before the stress induced storm to come.

Sound went distant. Colour started to drain. I could hear Dad. He was talking to a gaggle of nurses: "So 10am tomorrow, for definite?" The resounding silence said it all. The cracks were beginning to show in earnest. "Your bed manager said that he'd arrange and pay for a private crew for tonight." Dad hissed, "We had even given him the name of our regular private ambulance company, only to be told that G4S have made there own arrangements. That was nearly two hours ago. So, once again, where the hell are they?!" He growled.

"Fire Breather" an original cartoon by Rosie P

"Stretcher cases are more complicated than you understand, sir." exclaimed the nurse. Dad's laugh was more like a howl. If humans could spit fire, she would have been roasted alive in a nano second. Big mistake nurse, big mistake.
"I have travelled in more stretcher ambulances than you have had hot dinners, NEVER ever has it taken this long" he seethed. "That award you have on your notice board, for your ability to organise patient discharges is clearly not worth the paper it's written on!", and with that we set about dismantling my care for the second night in a row, leaving the nurse and gawping Carer to chew wasps alone.

I felt utterly drained, as if I'd run a marathon up Everest. With Dad busy on the phone, and another nurse placing my meds back in my bedside locker, I glanced at the clock. Time was not on my side. 8 o'clock. The night shift had started to arrive for handover. Amongst them was my favourite nurse. Dropping her bag in the corridor, she made a beeline for me, embracing me in a bear hug without a word. Grateful and emotional, I squeezed back. "I'm so sorry" she soothed.

"So am I", I whimpered, tears finally running. "So am I".

Too little, too late

I'm floating on an ocean of comfortable nothingness. Its silent except for the gentle lappng of the water. Calm. Peaceful. I can hear a voice in the distance. So far away it's almost inaudible above the waves. I strain, trying to work out where it's coming from.

"Rosie", I awake with a start. I'm on the ward in T9, the nurse is leaning over me, her hands resting gently on my arm. I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes, temporarily confused as to my whereabouts. "Walk up sleepy head, transports here".

A wave of anger hits me like a train, knocking the sleep out of me once and for all. "What, now? Buts it's too late! I've cancelled my nurses and Dad's gone home. What time is it anyway?"
She glanced at the clock. "Nearly 11pm" at this, a disgruntled man stuck his head round the curtain. "It's she ready or not?" He moaned, starting daggers. "We don't have time to be hanging about".

A tidal wave surged inside me, flooding me with hot adrenaline. I tried to swallow it back down, but there was no room. My volcano of frustration would not be contained. "We don't have time to be hanging about?!" I repeated, turning phasers to death con one. "Who the hell do you think you are?!" The man opened his month to reply, but my razor sharp gaze stopped him dead in his tracks. The colour drained out of his face, turning him a rather peculiar shade of grey. 

"I have been waiting for you to turn up since 3 o'clock this afternoon, and have spent my day being continuously lied to and fobbed off by your useless bloody company. As a result, I have been unable to return home and wil have to spend another night incarcerated with no sleep". The man gulped, shrinking back against the curtain, desperate to find some kind of relief from the intolerable heat of the death stare.

"So what do you want us to do?" Croaked the ambulance driver, eyes resolutely fixed on the floor, a shadow of his former bolshy self. I contorted my face into a smile and replied in little more than a whisper, "I want you to go back to your controllers and recant my immense displeasure. They shall be hearing from me with a formal complaint in due course".

His frantic nodding reminded me of one of those nodding dogs. The nurse and I watched in cold stony silence as he desperately tried to find his way out of the small gap in my curtains. Then like an animal being returned to the wild, he disappeared out of sight as fast as his short legs would carry him.