You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

KHOBAR ER

When my daughter, Monica, was 11 she developed type 1 diabetes. At that time we were warned that an injury to her foot could result in a serious infection. The doctor spoke of the possibility of gangrene and the amputation of a leg.

A year later we were spending a sunny Sunday at the beach north of our home in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The children were cavorting in the warm shallow water of the Arabian Gulf. While playing, Monica ran across some rotted coral. Pieces of it broke off, embedded in the sole of her foot. With her doctor’s warning in mind, I was concerned that the coral in her foot could become infected. So when we returned to Al-Khobar I dropped Maura and our two boys off at our apartment, and drove Monica to the emergency room at King Faisal Hospital, to have the coral removed from her foot.

It was around 7:30 PM when we arrived at the hospital. We entered through the emergency room entrance. The ER was more like a hallway than a room. It was crowded and somewhat chaotic. Steel chairs lined the off-white walls on one side of the hall. These chairs were occupied by an assortment of suffering human beings. On the other side was an imposing long counter which could easily have accommodated a dozen nurses. Two were on duty to register and triage a seemingly continuous stream of injury and disease. We registered and were instructed to find a seat among the sad souls waiting for emergency treatment. Most of those coming in were told to wait. The few serious cases were ushered past the waiting patients and through the large double doors at the end of the waiting hall. One such case was a man of about 30 who was wheeled through the waiting room on a gurney. His face was gaunt. I could see abrasions which could have come from a fight or, more likely, an automobile accident.

Some time later Monica and I were taken to a treatment bay. We walked past an open treatment bay There were four or five staff huddled around the man who had been wheeled past us earlier. They were working feverishly on him. It looked like they had opened his chest or abdomen but this may have been a wound resulting from an accident.

We waited in that small space for another hour. No one checked on us. Finally, I returned the waiting room to ask how long it would be. On my way to the front desk, I passed the sheet covered body of the young man, still on the gurney. It was parked against the corridor wall opposite the treatment bays. It was upsetting to think that the man who was alive when he was wheeled by us, an hour earlier, now lay outside our curtained bay, his lifeless body under a sheet.

The waiting room was still crowded. At the desk I asked when Monica would be seen. The nurse, looking harried, said “You can see how busy we are. Her injury is minor, we may get to her after midnight.”

It was a little after 10:30 PM. Aware that Monica had school in the morning. I returned to the treatment bay and told her that we were leaving and that we could clean out her foot at home. She looked dubious about the wisdom of this move as she put her shoe on over her sore foot, and we left the ER.

The one pharmacy in our small town closed at 11:00 PM. I drove there and purchased sterile water, bandages, and a large syringe. When home, Monica climbed onto the kitchen table. I sterilized a pointed kitchen knife, with which I dug the decomposed pieces of coral out of her foot. She did not complain though it had to have been painful. Using the syringe and sterile water I forcibly flushed her wounds free of every black grain of rotted coral. Then with her foot wrapped in bandages, she hobbled to the bedroom which she shared with her two sleeping brothers. We kept her foot clean and covered while it healed. Soon there was no longer any worry about infection, gangrene, or amputation, however the memory of that evening in the Khobar ER continued to fester in my mind.