the loblaws guy cleared his throat and stepped back nervously.
“i’m … i’m …,” he stuttered, as he gestured with his arm toward the store. as he walked away quickly, i thought about calling the paramedics again, but then i worried the woman might hear me and get upset, or worse, leave.
we sat there for awhile, quiet. something about the way she was rocking back and forth reminded me of the anxiety attacks my son used to have when he was little. “distract if you can,” his therapist used to say, “and get him to breathe.”
i asked her what her name was. she stopped rocking for a moment: “beth,” then, “elizabeth.” “i’m lisa,” i said. “did you want to try some deep breathing, beth?”
she moved a little closer, copying me as i sat cross-legged with my hands on my knees, and with every breath i took, she took a deep breath — “in through the nose, out through the mouth,” i repeated over and over for what seemed like forever.
the loblaws guy came back with a few bottles of water. “it’s been an hour,” he whispered, rolling his eyes.
the delay was frustrating, and could have been devastating had beth actually been experiencing an overdose. but as we sat there on the warm cement, underneath the pale yellow lights of the parking lot, i felt grateful that, even though she was obviously in distress, the situation wasn’t life or death — at least not in that moment. it was, though, yet another shocking example of how the system we depend on to take care of us is broken.
the system is “in crisis”
while on some levels it may feel like we are finally crawling out from underneath the oppressive shadow of covid (we can go to the local pub without a mask, yay!), our hospitals in the meantime have sunk deeper into chaos with, among a whole other slew of complicated issues, emergency departments that are overburdened by staffing shortages. this is, in turn,
creating a backlog that has ambulances often parked outside, monitoring patients in the back of their cabs until their care can be transferred to the hospital. during these “offload delays” — which can last hours — they aren’t taking 911 calls.