Sweet relief rushed through Sabelo when they reached the other hospital and the professionals took over.
“No, this is an emergency; we don’t need you getting in the way,” a nurse said, when he wanted to go with Winase to wherever they were taking her. “You’ll just have to wait.”
It was a wait that dragged on. Worry rose again, and so did anger.
“This place looks, I dunno, uncared for, don’t you think?” he said to Tjhudu, starting to stress about the quality of treatment Winase would be getting.
“Old building, and not too clean,” Tjhudu agreed. “Did you see that blood and puke on the floor back there? No-one was cleaning it up. The one nurse just looked at me when I said something about hygiene.”
“I bet that other place was all shining and sterile inside,” Sabelo said. “With staff always ready to clean up. You know what? It makes me sick that there’s this massive difference between public and private healthcare.”
“Same here,” Tjhudu agreed. “You should hear what Lolo’s ma says about what goes on, high-up corruption and even theft and shit. She reckons that’s why hospitals like this one aren’t so well-run. Everyone is too busy thinking about themselves rather than the patients.”
“And even if they are thinking of the patients … I’ve heard this thing about young medical graduate interns,” Sabelo said. “Some of them have to work shifts of, like, thirty hours.”
“Crazy. Imagine how tired they must get.”
“And tired people make mistakes.” Sabelo’s anxiety climbed higher.
Tjhudu looked at his phone to check the time. “You think they’ve forgotten that we’re waiting for news?”
Sabelo clenched his fists. He had to hope that was all it was, and not that the medics were still in a desperate battle to save Winase.
Then at last he saw a young woman in scrubs walking towards them. Sabelo tried to guess her news from her face, but she just looked exhausted.
“Your girlfriend has been lucky,” she told Sabelo, and he wondered if he was imagining she had stopped herself from adding ‘this time’.
No matter, he was thinking it.
***
Tell us what you think: How can Sabelo deal with knowing that there probably will be a ‘next time’ – that the girl he loves could often end up in hospital?