The girl calls over her shoulder to someone I can’t see. “Do we have a Finnamore down here?”
“Exam 2,” someone hollers.
“Exam 2,” the girl repeats to me, pulling open the door just enough to let me in. I don’t really blame her. I can feel everyone in the waiting room staring, as though they’ll be able to guess how long they’ll have to wait by glimpsing through the doors.
Based on the chaos going on back here, I expect they’ll be waiting a long time. In my short walk to Exam 2, I see a woman with a huge bloody gash on her forehead, a toddler screaming bloody murder as a nurse tries to give him a needle, and a terrifying middle-aged man hollering furiously at a doctor.
I rush into Exam 2 and hastily close the door behind me, but the scene inside is no less frightening.
Mrs. Finnamore is laid out on a stretcher with an IV bag dripping fluid into her arm. She’s dressed in a flimsy hospital gown, and her hair is sticking up on one side, and she just looks so...
Old.
I mean, I know that she’s old. She’s eighty-eight. But at home, with her hair done up and her day clothes on, puttering around her house, it’s easy to forget how old she really is. Lying there on the stretcher, she looks so incredibly frail. If I saw a picture of her as she is right now, I would say, yeah, that’s someone who shouldn’t be living alone.
God, what have Idone?
I approach her timidly. “Mrs. Finnamore?”
No response.
I try again, a little louder. “Mrs. Finnamore?”
Still nothing. I reach out nervously and touch her shoulder. She stirs, her eyes opening slowly. Her gaze is cloudy. She stares at me, but I don’t think she really sees me.
“Mrs. Finnamore, whathappened?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes close again, and within seconds, she’s asleep.
I step back from the stretcher, feeling cold and slightly nauseated. I look around the room, taking in the scary IV; the awful, astringent smell; the frantic beeping of an alarm sounding from somewhere outside the room... all of it coalesces into one single, awful thought.
Debra was right.
Mrs. Finnamore needed a nurse, not a naïve, unskilled receptionist whose only qualification was “liking old people.”
The door swings open and a tall man in blue scrubs comes in. His badge says Ethan Edwards, RN.
“How’s she doing?” I ask anxiously.
“Ah, she’s still pretty loopy from the pain medication,” he says. “Her blood pressure’s better, though. Are you a relative?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m... her neighbor.” I almost saycaregiver, but I’m too scared he’ll judge me for doing the job so poorly. “Is it okay for me to be in here?” I ask.
“Yeah, but she’ll be heading out soon.”
“Heading out?”
“The closest orthopedic surgeon is in Charlottetown. The ambulance should be coming to get her any second.”
“Why does she need to see an ortho—a surgeon?”
“She needs surgery to fix her hip.”
“Can’t you just—put a cast on?”
“Not for a hip fracture, no.”
I look at Mrs. Finnamore again. What if she doesn’t survive the surgery? What if shedies, because of me?
