Now one of the delights, as many the seasoned outback traveller will know, is that there is a distinct lack of take-away options in small bush towns, and while the motel sign may say “full restaurant facilities,” that should include a footnote, “only when very busy and the place is full, otherwise you have to go to the bowling club where they serve excellent Chinese food. But please note that the Bowling Club is only opened on certain nights, and if it’s busy then there’s a two hour wait for an omelette.”
So here I was, with two boiled eggs under my belt consumed at 7am, as well as an excellent choice of Mum’s best painkillers, and as the clock struck 2pm I realised I was very, very hungry.
Not only that, but I was unable to move.
And while the other delegates that I knew were due to arrive in Bourke that afternoon, at that strike of the clock I was totally, and utterly alone. In my fantasies about this trip, the misery seeping through every pore of my soul, as I stared miserably at the exposed brick work and the security bars on the window, was not, I repeat, NOT part of the picture.
As I stood, for the third miserable time that day and had to use the old leg trick to again stand up, I knew what I had to do.
Shuffling to the reception of the motel, in the hope that increase activity might, just might loosen my back up, I quietly asked if there was a working hospital in Bourke.
“Yes, just up the road, if you turn right at the end of the driveway it’s all the way up that street there…”
“Is there a doctor in Bourke?” I grimaced through spasms of pain…
“Yeah, we’ve got two…”
And despite what I’ve heard of as “bush hospitality”, I got in the car, a bottle of water in my bag prepared for a long wait to see a doctor at the Bourke Hospital. The motel reception might, just might have seen my predicament and offered to give me a lift on the two minute trip to the hospital, but he really didn’t want to know.
With some relief the hospital was easier to find than the town had been on the previous day…and I parked as close as I could to the emergency entry.
A beautiful place with roses growing and a taste of history I noted, as I shuffled towards the door, only to feel a splash of water from my hand bag….I looked inside my good leather bag, newish and hardly used, to see that my bottle of water had been badly secured and had broken it’s banks like a tragic bursting dam into my bag…which was now akin to an old fashioned bladder and cleverly held every drop of water.
Everything floated, papers, documents, even my wallet, and I rather unglamorously dropped to my knees and cried as I emptied the water into the hospital rose garden.
It was almost too much.
And as a woman leaving Emergency eyed me suspiciously on my knees in the rose garden, it was almost too much. I just felt so incredibly sorry for myself.
The tears flowed on in the waiting room, and as a nurse with less bed-side manner than a funeral conductor checked my blood pressure in the examining room, I still felt no gratification of the massive effort it had taken me to get to this hospital.
“When’d ya hurt ya back?” She said.
“A few weeks ago, I thought it would go away.”
“Hmph,” she grunted.
“I went to the chiropractor, I thought that would fix it.”
“Why didn’t y’go to the doctor,” she asked.
“I thought it was physical, not medical…”
“It’s always medical!” She walked out of the room, leaving me, not once inquiring as to where the pain was. “You’ll have to wait a bit, we’ve got an emergency case and the doctor’s very busy,” she’d said.
Half an hour later, still in my little room, still sobbing, a kindly male nurse brought me a glass of water and offered kindly words.
An hour after that the doctor, a rough unshaven South African doctor whose accent was so thick I couldn’t understand him when he asked me to follow him to another room. At my confusion, an off-duty nurse in the waiting room guided me, carrying my soaking hand-bag to the room…
I won’t go into details, perhaps you are already exhausted by this torrid journey. After examination the doctor told me he could not do anything for me. “What’s wrong with me?” I’d asked?
“You’ve got something wrong with your back,” he replied.
Wow, such incredible insight, such relief….not!
“We can’t do anything for you here. You need to get scans, and it will take a week for us to get the scans back. We could fly you to Dubbo, or Orange and they could take scans of your back there, or you can drive back to Broken Hill and see your own doctor.”
“But isn’t it dangerous to drive in this condition?”
“Only if you have an accident.”
Helpful.
