The difference between nice and polite

It is dif­fi­cult to like hos­pi­tals, and gov­ern­ment gen­eral hos­pi­tals are even more unlik­able because of their labyrinthine nature. You could walk for hours and end up in the same place and then ask some­one in uni­form where a par­tic­u­lar ward is when it just so hap­pens you’re stand­ing right next to the ward you want to go to.

Today, dur­ing a par­tic­u­larly busy hour, I found myself jammed at the back of the lift going down to the third floor lobby. The pas­sen­gers who got in with me on the top floor had just come from vis­it­ing patients at the mater­nity ward, and were nat­u­rally smil­ing and chatty. The lift then stopped at the floor with the oncol­ogy wards, and two pas­sen­gers get on board, and it takes a cou­ple of sec­onds before any­one notices that they’re snif­fling, sti­fling sobs, and dab­bing their eyes with tis­sue paper.

Later, the car valet at the National Uni­ver­sity Hospital’s Kent Ridge Wing car park says, “eh, boss how are you? Your wife ok already?”, because he’d seen Naomi and I go back and forth the spe­cial­ists’ clin­ics at the hos­pi­tal before our extended stay at the wards this past month.

The aun­tie who works behind the Delifrance kiosk at the Main Building’s semi-al-fresco food court knows me as “dou­ble espresso take­away”, and the Prima Taste stall waf­fle aun­tie calls me “two peanut but­ter”. She also sees through my “my wife, who’s warded upstairs, really likes the peanut but­ter waf­fle, so could you make mine first please because she’s in great pain from spinal surgery?” ruse, and said to me yes­ter­day after­noon, “don’t bluff lah, own­self want to eat don’t say you buy for wife lah”.

Then there’s the flower and gift shop aun­tie who asks me repeat­edly if I want to wait for the dol­phin, after I’ve just selected a dol­phin bal­loon to cheer Naomi up, and because I keep answer­ing repeat­edly, “No, I want my dol­phin bal­loon now”:

“You want weight for dol­phin balloon?”

“No, I want dol­phin now”

“No, you want weight for the dol­phin balloon?”

“No, I want dol­phin bal­loon now! Why I want to wait for the dol­phin balloon?”

“No, WEIGHT for dol­phin bal­loon. WEIGHT, WEIGHT, WEIGHT!”

“Dowan! I want now!” What for wait?”

“No, I scared you don’t have WEIGHT for the bal­loon, later you go out­side it will fly away. Many chil­dren lost their bal­loon like that!”

“Oh. Ooooh. Weight.… No need. I tie to my pants”

“OK“

Then there are the staff nurses at the mater­nity ward which Naomi was lodged at for two weeks because there weren’t beds left in the ortho­peadic wards. Don’t give them medals because medals won’t do them jus­tice. Don’t give them food because they won’t stuff their faces with snack­ies because they’re too busy really, really car­ing for peo­ple. These are nurses who, when they merely over­hear me talk­ing to a doc­tor agi­tat­edly, take it upon them­selves to go to Naomi’s room and offer a lis­ten­ing ear and a con­sol­ing voice.

Ward 96 staff, you’re cham­pi­ons. If there’s any­thing that takes the edge off the pain of ill­ness and hos­pi­tal cock-ups, it’s your fan­tas­tic atti­tude and care. You are gen­uinely nice. And we thank you for that.