Читать книгу Integrity - Anna Borgeryd - Страница 25

18

The night before the fifth of November, Vera woke up in a sweat, pulse racing. She had had a strange dream about a doctor who stood sorting people into different lines, injured and uninjured. In the dream, Vera’s aching left knee was a pulpy mess due to a gunshot wound, and she wound up in the line with the injured. After a while a small, furious dwarf in a red cap showed up with a yardstick and declared that the line for the injured was too long, because it was longer than his yardstick! The doctor obediently changed his mind and his decision. Vera was moved to the line for the uninjured, and showing him the gunshot wound to her knee made no difference. When she awoke from the dream her cheeks were wet with tears.

With a pounding heart, Vera hobbled over to her desk and turned on her computer. She did a search on the comforting words Healthcare guarantee. So it was that, at 2:41 in the morning on the fifth of November, Vera realized that, because she wasn’t yet in a queue for an MRI scan, all the time she had waited so far didn’t count, and the healthcare guarantee period had not yet begun. She toyed with a conspiracy theory that pharmacy companies bribed doctors not to treat joint injuries too quickly, so that they would have the opportunity to sell a lot of pills, then rejected the idea.

But there must have been some reason why they wanted to keep her off the x-ray waiting list? The other horrible suspicion was not so easy to reject; it stuck to her like her now ice-cold pajama top. Because there it was on the screen: The guarantee regulates only the period of time within which one is to be offered treatment which has been approved by qualified healthcare professionals. It was obvious that everyone wanted the numbers to look good, so that the Swedish healthcare system wouldn’t fail to meet the guarantee in 30 or 40 per cent of cases! So no decision about treatment means no visible healthcare waiting lists? Or perhaps, in practice, fewer treatment decisions, more acceptable visible healthcare waiting lists?

She didn’t know how much time she had spent staring at the comforting words on the screen. In her obliviousness, they had lulled her into a false security. She realized that now.

After some time, she became aware of the fact that she was chilled to the bone. She forced herself to get out of the chair and went to take a warm shower.

She got all the way to Cat Stevens’ Morning has broken on her playlist of songs to fall asleep to on her cellphone, before she finally drifted off for a couple of hours. Then the alarm went off, and Vera dragged herself out of bed in the November darkness.

This time the orthopaedic specialist was a younger man named Modin. Once again she was asked to lie down on the paper-covered bed, and he felt, pried and pulled on her leg to examine its flexibility and functioning. He was concerned that her knee was still locking and that the muscles in her left leg had lost half of their volume, even though she was trying to practise the exercises that she was able to do. Seeing the large difference between her left and right thighs, he decided that she needed to be put on the waiting list for an MRI.

Yes! Finally! Vera had time to think, before Modin went on, somewhat embarrassed.

‘But, unfortunately, there’s quite a long waiting list. You shouldn’t expect it to happen before late spring.’

Late spring?! Her heart sank again; her voice almost didn’t hold.

‘But that’s impossible! I’ve already waited since May. Do you mean that I might have to live with a smashed meniscus in my knee for a whole year before I even get an MRI?’

‘We mustn’t draw hasty conclusions. If a piece of the meniscus is out of place then we will see it on the MRI. I’m sorry, but unfortunately that’s how long the waiting list is.’ Modin asked briskly if she was still a student and whether or not she needed a sick note – and if she wanted a new prescription for Diclofenac – before he offered her a firm handshake and the appointment was over.

When Vera limped past the waiting room with a disobedient tear running down one cheek, a dark-haired nurse suddenly came up to her. She discreetly pushed a note into her jacket pocket and whispered:

‘Call this number and ask for Erland. Sometimes patients don’t show up, and if you can come on short notice, well…’

‘Thanks! Erland?’ whispered Vera back, and she felt a ray of hope returning.

Apparently there is a secret passage through the wall!

As soon as she reached home Vera locked herself in her room, called the secret number, and said the password. Her call was forwarded, but Erland was at lunch, and when she explained why she was calling, the woman’s voice on the other end expressed surprised irritation.

‘So you mean you’re not a doctor?’

Vera wondered what that had to do with anything. ‘No, I’m an anesthetic nurse.’

That fact did not mollify the woman on the other end in the least. She sounded impatient, as if she were straining to express herself properly to an irritating child.

‘Yes, but now you’re calling as a patient? It is your own presumed cruciate ligament and meniscus injury that you’re talking about?’

Now Vera understood that the secret passage through the wall was for people on the Inside, and she felt like a heavy stone was rolling in front of the entrance and blocking the little ray of light that she had seen. Vera could no longer hold back her despair and she sobbed out a little ‘yes’ in response. There was a deathly silence on the other end of the line. Then Vera heard the rustling of paper.

‘Aha…’ The gatekeeper woman on the other end seemed to be engaging in an inner struggle with herself, and she finally folded. ‘There is a cancellation here for the eighth of January. So what is your name? Your healthcare number?’

The last thing the woman who guarded access to Erland – the secret shortcut through the waiting list at Norrland’s University Hospital – said to her was, ‘I hope you know that I’m being nice to you!’

When Vera hung up the phone she felt strangely guilty. But when she wrote MRI and circled Tuesday, 8 January in her calendar, it felt like she was grasping her last available lifeline. The scans would be done, and then they would see that her knee could not heal on its own. She would finally get help.