CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Harriet Tumbled: Now I Know Why Brits Love and Fear for Their NHS

Edgar Degas, After the Bath, c. 1895. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum (Public Domain).

The Twineham Ward of Princess Royal Hospital, Haywards Heath, Sussex, U.K., consists of six bays of patients to the left, multiple offices to the right and a long corridor in between. But to call it a corridor isn’t quite right; it’s more like a spine because it’s the nerve center where senior nurses direct junior nurses and aids, doctors review patient records, and visitors enter and leave. It’s also a rehab space where elderly patients with frames (“walkers” in American dialect) shuffle up and down, exercising repaired or replaced hips.  I was there because my wife, Harriet – at 60 the baby of the ward – tumbled when stepping out of a bathtub in a Brighton hotel room that had a nice view of the English Channel.

After hearing her scream, I opened the bathroom door and saw Harriet in a pile in front of the tub, naked except for a towel around her middle. I thought of Degas’ painting of a woman with one leg propped on the rim of a bathtub and the rest of her naked body below. “Did you fall?” I stupidly asked. “Are you hurt?” She replied through gritted teeth with a cliché of her own: “I think I’m ok.” I knew she wasn’t. Refusing to believe she’d seriously hurt herself, Harriet scuttled across the bathroom floor like T.S. Eliot’s crab, then across the carpet and somehow up on the bed. I dialed 999, the U.K. emergency services number. That’s when I discovered a major flaw of the National Health Service, established in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health under Labor Prime Minister Clement Attlee – ambulance wait times. My conversation with the dispatcher was roughly as follows:

“My wife has had an accident and we need an ambulance.” “May I speak to her?” “Sure, here she is.” “Is there any bone protruding through the skin?” “No.” “Were you unconscious at any time after your fall? Can you stand up or walk?” “No and no.” “Ok, we’ll send an ambulance for you.” I came back on the line: “About how long will that be?” “Our average wait time is between one and four hours, but the latter is an outlier. We’ll send one as soon as we can.”

“My wife has had an accident and we need an ambulance.”

“May I speak to her?”

“Is there any bone protruding through the skin?”

“Were you unconscious at any time after your fall? Can you stand up or walk?”

“Ok, we’ll send an ambulance for you.”

I came back on the line: “About how long will that be?”

“Our average wait time is between one and four hours, but the latter is an outlier. We’ll send one as soon as we can.”

Two hours ticked by. I called again and had roughly the same exchange. At three hours, 20 min, Harriet grimaced, moaned, then screamed in agony and began shaking uncontrollably. I knew what shock looked like, so I bundled her up in blankets, encouraged her to breathe slowly and deeply and called another NHS dispatcher:

“No, my wife cannot speak to you because she’s in too much pain. She’s going into shock. You must raise the level of urgency to one or two and send somebody at once.” In the hour since my previous call, Gemini AI (my new buddy) told me that every ambulance summons, save imminent death, rates an “urgency level” of three or four from the NHS. My words had the desired effect. “I’ll send an ambulance right away.”

“No, my wife cannot speak to you because she’s in too much pain. She’s going into shock. You must raise the level of urgency to one or two and send somebody at once.” In the hour since my previous call, Gemini AI (my new buddy) told me that every ambulance summons, save imminent death, rates an “urgency level” of three or four from the NHS. My words had the desired effect.

“I’ll send an ambulance right away.”

45 minutes later, help arrived in the form of two diminutive, bespectacled, white men, 40ish, with working-class accents and calm demeanor. They finished each other’s sentences like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern – but were kind and competent. They quickly gave Harriet laughing gas (nitrous oxide) to reduce the pain while checking her vitals. Then they hoisted her onto their gurney and took her down the elevator, past hotel reception, and into a night that smelled........

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