Each of us, from time-to-time, experiences sudden and unexpected encounters with our past. Working in a hospital emergency department, in a small city, provides more than the average number of such encounters. It is usually in the form of a patient or a member of the family. Sometimes it can be very distressing.
In my youth I spent nine years in the Royal Australian Navy. I enrolled in medical school after I paid off. At work in the E.D. on the day before Easter last year, I recognised a name on the computer screen which lists the patients yet to be seen and their triage precedence. We usually select the highest priority patient, put our name alongside that of the nurse and get about solving the presenting problems. It is my habit to not select patients known to me and I did not select this patient. However, I determined that it was, indeed, the person I thought it was and introduced myself.
He recognized me immediately, although the last time we saw each other was in 1969 and I was wearing a Petty Officer’s uniform. He was a long-retired naval officer now very, very ill and a shadow of his former self - as I remembered him. We chatted for a short while. He complimented me on my achievements. I thanked him and told him he was one of the few naval officers I admired and respected. He thanked me for that. We shook hands, wished each other well and I got on with what I had to do. A colleague looked after him and told me later that he had arranged for him to go to a teaching hospital.
Exactly one year later, on the day before Easter, that name was there again. And it was the same retired naval officer. This time he looked much better than previously and his presenting complaint was not serious. He told me he was cured of his previous problem. Again we chatted for a while and he expressed the sentiment that it was a pity we had to meet in this place. I smiled, shook his hand and said, “See you next Easter.” But I didn’t. I worked the day before Good Friday yet again but that patient did not present. I had recently learned that he had died while I was interstate. I would have liked to have attended his funeral and paid my last respects to a real officer and gentleman.
On another occasion a lady of about my own age was brought in by ambulance and allocated a bed alongside the access way between the various areas of the department. I was working the late afternoon shift and had to walk past the bed frequently. I did not recognize her but that is not uncommon because even very familiar faces are not familiar when seen out of the context of their usual environment, lying horizontal in a hospital bed and, often as not, ill or in pain or both.
I was tidying up in preparation to knocking off when, as I walked past her bed, she called my name. I stopped. “You have the advantage over me.” I said with a smile. Even close up I did not recognize her.
“I thought it was you.” she said, “Then, when one of nurses used your name just now, I was certain.” She asked me if I remembered a certain man.
“Yes, indeed I do. But I haven’t seen or heard of him for donkey’s years.”
“I was his first wife.” she said.
“Ah! Now, as I recall, I was at your wedding.”
“Not only that but you were our best man.”
So that, I thought, was that. We chatted for quite a while until a colleague came along and informed her that the investigations were OK and she could go home. She told me she still kept in touch with her first husband and I asked that she remember me to him. She agreed and we went our separate ways.
When I arrived home my wife told me of a distressing episode at bridge that day. A lady, whom she did not know personally, had collapsed and was taken to hospital by ambulance. Of course it turned out to be the lady who had spoken to me at work. Subsequently, via the bridge club, I was delivered of a set of photographs of the wedding including myself as best man. I cut a dashing figure, in those days, even if I do say so myself. It is amazing, not to mention distressing, the physical changes inflicted upon one by forty odd years. Age certainly does weary us, and the years do condemn!
Then there was the shop steward. He was with a boy who had fallen from a bike and broken his arm. The nurses had moved him directly into the treatment room and made him as comfortable as possible. I saw him within minutes of his arrival. I walked into the room and was taken aback to see the shop steward standing alongside the boy. He recognized me immediately and greeted me by name. “Arrh…. G’day, Chris,” I said. “Have I got the right patient? I’m looking for a patient named Thomas.”
“Yair, you’ve got him, Ken. I’m his uncle. Long time no see. How are you keeping?”
“Oh. I see. Yair, I’m all right. But what’s the trouble with Thomas? I believe he fell off his bike and broke his arm.”
The accident was explained to me, I examined the boy’s arm and arranged analgesia and x-rays. The shop steward chatted away quite affably all this time while I was, frankly, rather stand-offish. I had never liked this bloke and we had had some torrid arguments when I was an occupational physician with a large mining company and he was a senior shop steward.
“You still working at the refinery?” I asked, as the boy was being wheeled off for the x-ray.
“Yair. Still there and still giving management curry.”
“I know what you mean. You were pretty good at that. You and I had our moments, too, as I recall.”
“We did, Ken, we did. But I was simply doing my job of looking after the interests of the union members and you were doing your job. I think, a lot of the time, we were singing from the same song book but neither of us was prepared to agree with the other. Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge now. I’m not bearing any grudges. How about you?”
I had to think for a short while but then smiled and extended my hand. “No. As you say, it’s all water under the bridge now.”
He shook my hand firmly and asked if he could go to x-ray with his nephew. I agreed and explained how to get to the x-ray department. He thanked me quite politely and left.
On the way home I reflected on that encounter and had cause to wonder at who was the better person. Then there was Gabby – he had also been in the navy but we first met through a mutual friend long after we had both returned to civilian life. He was sitting alongside his ill wife in one of the E.D. cubicles, one day, and called out to me as I passed. We chatted as old friends do after the passage of some years without contact. His wife, although ill, contributed to the conversation. She was to be admitted and subsequently went home, cured. Gabby was. “… fighting fit, Ken, fighting fit!”
The better part of a year passed before their roles were reversed. Gabby was on the bed and his wife sat alongside him. She called out to me. Gabby weakly took my hand whispering a fond greeting. I had difficulty concealing my distress at his obviously terminal illness but held his hand for what seemed like a long time while we chatted. Then the ambos turned up to take him to another hospital in the city. We said our farewells. I read his death notice in the morning newspaper only a week later.
I was suturing a lacerated leg on a busy day. The patient was a reticent type and seemed to have something on his mind. On completion, as I was applying a dressing, he said, “You did a better job this time.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Don’t remember me do you?” he said.
“No, I’m afraid not. You have the advantage over me.”
“Well, I was a fifteen year old Junior Recruit at Leeuwin in 1968 and you were a Petty Officer Sick Bay tiffy. You stitched up my foot and it hurt like hell. I always reckoned you didn’t use any local anaesthetic. Today you didn’t hurt a bit.” (The Navy, in those days at Leeuwin, would not let us inject local anaesthetic unless there was a doctor present.)
We had an affable chat, shook hands and away he went, as happy as Larry.
