Panic!
I was shooting on assignment at the Jewish cemetery in Quebec-City that afternoon, with my friend Simon. It was a perfect Indian Summer weather, with temperatures above 20°C. Then we went to a shopping center buy him a new router. While at the checkout counter, my cell phone rang. It was Nicole. Something bad happened but the line fell. Panic! It took fifteen minutes to re-establish communication. Already the initial interaction brought to light how inadequate our emergency planning was. We had no plan!
She was bleeding. Many women have bleedings during the first three pregnancy months. Her doctor said she should schedule an emergency sonography but it was already past 15:30 and the hospital’s scheduling line was no longer attended. We decided to go to the emergency ward and wait there. Little problem: she was in Trois-Rivières, no car. I was in Quebec-City, 90 minutes away. Rush hour was just beginning!
Simon was kind enough to let me drop him at the next bus station. Then I drove toward Trois-Rivières. I was speeding. All I had in mind was to reach Nicole A.S.A.P. I was very lucky when I drove past two police cars busy enforcing speed limits. Compared to Switzerland, Germany and France, Quebec’s police use inefficient speed limit enforcement.
Later on there was a work zone. For eight long kilometers I could not pass the cars ahead of me. Speed was reduced. The slow down made time for me to actually think and tinker with the cell phone. Why had I not thought of it before? one of our local friends could drive Nicole to the emergency ward.
Danny was just back home from his work day. In ten minutes he drove Nicole to the local hospital where his girlfriend Guylaine is a nurse. She just finished her shift and helped Nicole through triage. This solved the choice of emergency ward, the options being locally in Trois-Rivières or at our hospital in Quebec-City, with a 90 minutes drive trade-off between them.
I arranged for some food for Nicole (a falafel from El Taouk) and myself. Then we waited. Almost nine hours, before going home with half of a lesson learned: we will find out in the coming days that the emergency ward at the Trois-Rivières Regional Hospital Center Sainte-Marie is different than the emergency ward at the two Québec-City hospitals (Christ Roy and CHUL) we will be dealing with.
But for now, we did not know. All we knew was that we have wasted a full nine hours. It did not have any influence on the outcome, and next time we’ll know better how not to waste time. Tomorrow is another attempt to see a doctor.