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.
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