A Trip to the A&E

(Accident & Emergency, or the UK’s ER)

I was supposed to be writing about Short Stories this month, but a trip to the hospital had me writing this instead. The new post about Short Stories will be out on July 1 instead!

I thought I’d been to an A&E over here when I had my asthma flare up a few months ago, but it turns out it was an Urgent Care Centre inside of a hospital. I’m learning more and more about how many “hospitals” there are here, but how they all do very specific things. This time I had to find an actual A&E, because I started to have chest pain at 1:00 in the afternoon on a rather nice day back in May.

I remember sitting across from a student in a science lab. There were four of us sat around the table and between us were gas valves for when they had to connect up burners with long rubber tubes. The tubes are old and have become soft, and I love how they feel.

The teacher starts one burner, and that’s where the students light their own wooden splints before walking them back to their burners. It’s the most careful I ever see the students, when they’re walking those small flames.

I couldn’t be in these rooms when my asthma was bad because the air gets so filled with particulates. Now when I’m sitting in them, I remember that those particulates are still there, and it’s just that my lungs don’t seem to mind.

But this day we weren’t doing a lab (or what they call, a practical). The gas was off in the room. The students were learning about the phases of the moon, which was not holding their attention. We were going to try to hold up soccer balls and flashlights (footballs and torches) and make eclipses with our heads.

Instead the students were happy to play with the balls and point the lights into each other’s eyes. Soon they found the setting on the flashlights that makes them strobe and the whole room was bouncing with light. One girl held the ball at her stomach and said, “I’m pregnant.”

I was pressing my palm into my chest, and the student across from me said, “Are you okay?” And I said, “I’m just having a migraine.” And it felt stupid saying it—a migraine doesn’t happen in one’s chest—but there I was, and she seemed to accept it as an answer.