The kadeesa

Well then. Today was an interesting day. Yup. Innnteresting indeed. So I come to work and there’s kind of an uproar going on inside revolving around an Indonesian housemaid brought by the ambulance after being beaten with a metal rod by her employer and his wife. They’ve managed to break her fingers and an arm and bruised her from head to toe. Her pregnancy test says she’s either very early in her pregnancy or she’s lost the baby already. Anyway she gets admitted and I don’t know what the story was about.
So I’m sitting outside doing triage duty and then this girl comes in and sits down. She has a minor complaint and the nurse wants to defer her. Then she says: ‘Reem?’
I stared at her for a while and then it comes to me out of this mist: ‘Sally?!’ (That’s not her real name of course).

I was shocked. The girl in front of me looked so much like her old self, but was so different, I wonder how I didn’t recognize her. Another reason why I wondered why I didn’t recognize her was that this girl was one of the many people who had traumatized my childhood. She wasn’t a bully but she was so mean sometimes. She made fun of my clothes and the games we played. I think I actually hated her. Whatever my sentiments, I had no qualms about her drifting out of my life for so many years. And here she was! And oh, what a sight =( She was depressed, overweight and friendless. Despite a good undergraduate degree from Australia or somewhere, she had ended up in the University surrounded by people she didn’t like and a job that was taking her nowhere. All her friends, or the friends she used to have, were either married or studying abroad. She was losing her hair and hated the way she looks. And she was so depressed! As I stood there talking to her I couldn’t help feeling upset that I had such a bad image of her in my past and such a pathetic image of her in my present. I felt sorry for her. Such irony!
ANYway, what else happened today, hmm…. lots of fighting with deferred patients, no major drama though. Nothing else I guess, except for the kadeesa! That crazy cat. I’ve seen her around I guess, I think she hangs out in front of the hospital but she’s never actually stepped inside. She was just lounging around the waiting room, walking up and down, lying down under the gurney and people’s feet, in front of all the men too! It was so funny lol, she’s just chillaxing and running in and out everytime the door opens. Apparently yesterday morning she was around too, looking in through the labour room window. Yeah. Oh well. It was an interesting day.