A very amazing incident happened to me 2 days ago, one which I really do want to share with you guys. It made me think a hell lot. It looked like scenes from those movies which make Lilian weep and cry, as if she just lost her agnes b handbag.

There are 2 doctors in that clinic I volunteer in, and there are 2 consultation rooms. So normally there is one doctor in each, but the doctor I usually follow had some other work to do that day so he wasn’t in his room.

So I was alone; Alone in the doctor’s room. But there were still kids who were scheduled to take their weight and height for their medical record, so I had to stay there and wait.

An old lady rushed into the room out of the blue and talked to me in Sonic-Speed-Spanish. I was busy taking the height of a kid and I couldn’t really comprehend her blabber. There were always impatient parents who come in and ask what takes us so long; but then I heard a little girl crying.

I went out to see what happened. I saw a little girl, whose T shirt was full of blood, sitting on a bench crying. I looked for her wound. It was behind her skull. An inch-long cut, still bleeding. ‘How did that happen?’ I asked her mom. She rattled on and I didn’t get a single word.

I rushed into the other doctor’s room at once and told her about the girl. We took the girl in and she told me to clean the wound with torundas. My doctor came in and he checked the wound, talked to the mom, then left. The doctor then asked me to push it with a cotton pad until it stops bleeding. When it sort of slowed down a bit, she washed the wound with savalon and gave the girl 10cc of Buprex Ibuprofen via a syringe.

‘Muy bien’(Very well) the doctor said, and asked the mother to sit aside with the girl and press her wound, so she went on with her patients. She was having a really busy day.

‘Is that it?’ I asked the doctor

She said yes

What? No stitches? That god damn cut is over an inch long!!! On a tiny little head of a 4 yr-old! It was pretty deep too, and still bleeding!!

‘Don’t even have to cut her hair?’ I asked

She said no, it’s fine.

Wtf?

The wounds on my lips and gum had like 2 stitches per 5mm, and I still got scars; yet no stitches for a whole damn inch behind her cerebral hemisphere?

I looked at the mom. She looked back at me.

Okay, I am in no position to argue with them. As a matter of fact my medical knowledge is miles (even light-years) behind them. There were a few more kids waiting to take their weight and height, so I went back to my doctor’s room.

You wouldn’t believe what I saw.

I saw Miss Ecuador. The real one.

She was walking around the clinic with a bunch of kids, wobbling her huge boobs (Sorry I did not mean to stare at them on purpose but they were blocking my view of her face) I asked the doctor whether she’s the real Miss Ecuador. The doctor laughed and said of course. She probably just came back from that Miss world thingy.

She made a loud and boisterous entry to the room next door. Yes. The room in which the doctor was seeing her patients, and most importantly, where the little injured girl was resting.

There were people from the press following her. Cameras; Lots of cameras; Reporters; Body Guards; Maybe even paparazzi. The clinic was in a temporary chaos.

I heard the little girl start crying loudly. Of course she would be scared, and she was VERY scared indeed. Consider how much she needed some peace, quietness and oxygen. My doctor came out and yelled at those people getting into the room and asked the mother to carry the girl into his room (Where I am at), and laid her on the bed.

I had always knew those so-called celebrities charity visits are just pranks. Those attention seekers strive to get into the headlines by ACTING sympathetic, compassionate, whatever. But in fact they do more harm than good, messing up the whole chemistry of the clinical system, yet they still manage to mislead the population into thinking how nice and thoughtful they are. What a joke.

During the panic the girl’s mom dropped and broke the bottle of Buprex which she was supposed to feed her everyday afterwards. Then my doctor told her off. They started arguing. I saw the woman sob. The girl cried louder than ever.

The doctor left. Then the mom left. I was left alone with the girl.

Right. What am I supposed to do now? I tried to use every single word in my Espanol vocabulary to comfort her. She couldn’t stop crying, it must be hard to get over the trauma she just had, especially for a young girl this age, without her mom beside her, with a complete stranger muttering something totally meaningless to her.

So what can I do??

I suddenly recalled that I got my camera with me. And I still got pictures in it from my visit to the Santa Martha Animal Rescue center.

I searched for the pictures of the pumas, jaguars, ocelots… and showed the girl. She quieted down a bit, trying to figure out what it was. ‘Look!’ I told her ‘This is a Puma! Meow!’

She laughed.

That was the best thing I heard in these few weeks.

I showed her the other photos. She eventually fell asleep, so I went back to my seat and read her medical record. Her name is Pillica Santin Angelica Maria (pronounced as Pee-yee-ka Sahn-teen Un-heh-lee-ka Mah-lee-ah). Pretty soon my doctor came back with some patients. He asked me where her mother is. I didn’t know. The doctor shrugged and we got on with our work.

After about an hour, there was a knock on the door. It was the Angelica’s mother, panting. She handed the doctor a packet. The doctor opened it.

It was a pack of surgical thread and needle.

I was speechless (I always am anyway)

The doctor was stunned.

I heard him asking the women whether she went to the other town, since there is basically nothing in this remote village. So it took that old mother a whole hour to go all the way to another town and back, just to buy a pack of surgical thread and needle. I guess the doctors refused to stitch that kid’s wound so she bought it then the doctors would have nothing to say.

Can I have some background music here?

Then Angelica woke up. Her mother carried her. The whole surgery was done in the mother’s arms. The doctor anesthetized the girl and showed me how the knots are supposed to be tied in stitches like this, and I had to wipe the blood. The girl had been conscious all the way.

Finally the surgery was over.

I told Angelica, ‘You are a very brave girl.’

She turned to her mother and said with a smile, ‘She showed me kittens!’

Her mother smiled back at her, but I suppose she didn’t understand what Angelica said. Only the little girl and I would know what that meant.

The doctor gave her another bottle of Buprex Ibuprofen. I wrote the prescription sheet. She took them, carried her daughter and headed towards the door.

Suddenly she turned back. She turned to me and shook my hands and said:

‘Thank you very much. See you soon’

Okay. Sorry if I bored you with this long winded story. It may sound pretty dull and unexciting to you, but when you are actually involved in all the scenes, alongside the entire cast, it becomes awfully inspiring. Pretty hard to explain it in words, but I’ve tried the best I could.