Next

Please, please her words pleaded

from tearful trembling lips,

as I watched her standing at the counter

of the hospital billing office,

her desperation so apparent in her voice,

mutters of pain over the care,

infection caused by incompetence

when her son was given wrong medication.

 

But the clerk didn’t care,

he merely poured over his papers

utterly indifferent to the injustice,

hardly listening to her words,

never even acknowledged the wrong,

just stamped her form with a date stamp,

then said, “next.”

 

She turned, a working class woman with no insurance,

who had brought her son for an emergency.

Hands held the photo of her child,

now in a comma from being given a wrong injection,

which was denied by the staff

that blamed her for not telling them

he was allergic to a certain antibiotic.

 

Oh her voice tried to insist

it had been told to the receiving nurse,

yet she had no proof,

not a single evidence to validate her claim.

 

Was another tragedy of life

quickly lost in the shuffle of patients,

so sadly too easily forgotten.

 

How many of those stories

remain vapors absorbed by white walls,

where you might be treated with some concern

even if the last one helped

still lingers in a comatose state

from a hasty, apathetic case of OOPS

only prayer that perhaps

somehow they will have a miracle in their heart

and not duplicate the amnesia,

which will spare you being treated the same.