Day 64 - Rescue 911

One morning sometime around 2-3am I awoke in a pool of blood. It took me a few minutes to calculate what was going on I knew I was in pain and I could feel liquid leaving my face I groaned as I felt my body again, opened my eyes and closed them. I just needed to lie there for a while I just wanted to sleep. I heard a girls voice, “Oh my god are you alright?” Normally I would have some dead pan answer but being closer to dead on this day I didn’t have it in me, “Um yeah, I just think I fainted I just need to lie here a while I’ll be ok in a minute” I wanted her to go away. She told me she was going to a call an ambulance I replied, “No don’t! I will get someone to drive me I’ll be fine I just need a few minutes” I thought about who was going to drive me, as I wasn’t actually sure I knew anybody well enough to ask the favour, but I had just watched the film Sicko and a scene had jumped into my head when a lady’s insurance company had refused to pay her ambulance bill because she failed to obtain pre-approval as she was unconscious, yes that’s right folks unconscious. Did I need pre-approval? No one really has or needs health insurance in New Zealand what were the rules? The last thing I needed was a $10,000 bill for a flashing red taxi. I explained this and knew how lame it sounded as soon as it left my mouth the pool of blood growing. She said she was going to do it anyway and left. By this time a small crowd had gathered. The first question camp mother AKA Residence Life Coordinator asked me was, “have you been drinking?”, and as luck would have it I had, but I was always drinking and four beers over six hours is under my normative drinking habits. Nonetheless, I could feel the judgement searing my helpless body. 

The medics arrived and I was filled with confidence and embarrassment as I saw six chiselled good-looking young men, it was just like the episodes of 911 I saw as a kid except better looking (New Zealand had the real problem of people dialling 911 instead of 111 in emergencies). The emergency staff back home had nothing on these guys. “How come six people come out when someone just faints?” I asked, feeling like a complete moron and time waster with my room being within an arms reach and me managing to pass out instead on the concrete tiles a few steps before the carpeted stretch. “We always have a fire truck come out with the ambulance people can be to heavy to move with just two medics” this makes me laugh hurting my face “only in America huh?” and I tell him about back home. He helps me onto the stretcher and trundles me off all dishevelled and bloody in my stripy red pyjamas. I think about old people alone and vulnerable; I don’t want to get old. The verdict after much prodding, drugs, nudity, and tests was a fractured nose and a head injury resulting from dehydration and an on-coming flu. I wait to be picked up by my roommate in the outside lobby its 7am and the only people I see are staff coming to work and a small child with his mother holding an ice cream container under his face with the shock now subsiding I swallow back sobs. I have a painful and vacant few days once more on Vicodin.