Hope inside a hospital emergency ward

By Linda Bordoni

The three days I spent inside the emergency room of an overwhelmed Rome hospital recently, can only be described as both scary and incredibly challenging. But they were also a life lesson that unexpectedly renewed my hope in humanity in the midst of global darkness, uncertainty, and fear.

The patients

In an emergency room, everyone is the same. Illness pushes everything else away, it pares us down, and strips us of all the trimmings. Most of the patients are elderly, confused and afraid. Like everyone else, they crave contact and comfort amid the anguish of being cut off from their loved ones. So, every time another more able-bodied patient steps in to offer a kind word, or a quick squeeze of the hand, the shadows are driven away, even if just for a moment.

The staff

Doctors, nurses, trainees, cleaners, the orderlies bringing the food – all are stretched to the limit. The chaos and commotion conjures up scenes from Dante’s Inferno. Everyone is calling out at once, pleading for relief from pain and answers to questions. Everyone needs something: water, food, oxygen, a phone that works, help in finding a lost pair of glasses. There are patients who have to be contained so they don’t harm themselves. Many are shouting, a few cry, others pray, and some are so withdrawn into themselves it seems like they’ve given up altogether. Diapers are discreetly changed in corners and even in the middle of the room. Women and men, old and not-so-young, are wiped, washed, and wrapped with firm but tender respect and care.

The lessons

It was there in the emergency room that the word “mercy” took on a whole new meaning for me. Suddenly I understood Pope Francis’ invitation to be like the Good Samaritan, someone who “indicates a lifestyle, the centre of which is not ourselves, but others, with their difficulties, who we meet on our path and who challenge us”. How can I forget the challenge of having to meet the bewildered eyes of a young man from Bangladesh as I helped doctors explain to him in English that he will never recover from Crohn’s Disease? Or the challenge of seeing the tears of a man with stroke symptoms, certain he would die before being able to say goodbye to his wife and daughter. “She’s a musician,” he said proudly, “she plays the violin at the Rome Opera”. As I myself was being wheeled me away, he gripped my hand, his only lifeline at that moment, a thread of hope. Letting go was challenging too. And watching the normally grumpy lady in the next bed express all the care of a mother for her child as she patiently spoon-fed an 86-year-old woman to whom she wasn’t even related, I was challenged to ask myself if I would do the same.

Good Samaritans

So many stories. So much suffering. But in that emergency ward, like in others the world over, those doing the caring and those being cared for, are all connected by a common thread of giving and receiving. In a world of conflict and chaos, injustice and division, there are still so many Good Samaritans who continue to offer their healing hands, hands filled with mercy and compassion. And that in itself is enough to renew my hope in humanity.