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over the loudspeaker. It means a violent patient and summons the security guards to help out. I prayed that guy hadn’t attacked Cara.
    In minutes, I’d gone from a walking, talking nurse to a flat-out, full-blown patient. I even looked the part in my ICU scrub pants and a hospital-issue gown.
    An ultrasound showed a kidney stone. A nurse started an IV and injected one milligram of morphine for the pain and an antiemetic for the nausea. Ahh, relief came in moments. After a few hours, I passed the stone. I felt great, good to go.
    I put the incident out of my mind until about a year later. I awoke during the night with a start, certain I was being stabbed. It was the same searing pain but now on the other side.
It’ll pass, just like the last time. Ride it out. Don’t go to the hospital!
    Within an hour, the pain escalated. I was frantic. “Take me to the hospital,” I begged Ivan and he drove me to the nearest one. In the car, I writhed and moaned, tried to stand up on the seat, even considered jumping out. I have known patients who bore their pain with great dignity, but I had none. I was the opposite of dignity. Pain turned me into an animal.
    At the hospital, there was the usual chaos and desperation so familiar to me that it actually calmed me down. All the seats weretaken, people were standing around sipping coffee, leaning against the walls. It was any Toronto scene with hijabs and backpacks, turbans and jeans, jallabeyahs, saris, and dashikis. It was also any ER scene: a gaunt, bald woman draped with a homemade, brightly coloured crocheted afghan, sitting in a wheelchair vomiting into a basin; a biker dude in black leather and studs bleeding from slash wounds on his arms and neck; a red-faced baby crying in its mother’s arms. Even the requisite drunk who was in a room by himself, screaming, “I’ll kill you, Mommy. You’ll be dead in three days!”
Ho-hum. Another day at the office
. To me, the only thing that mattered was my pain.
    It looked like it was going to be a long wait, so I sent Ivan home to look after the kids while a triage nurse listened to my story, took my vital signs, and sent me back out to the waiting room. I knew the score: in my street clothes, I was a civilian like everyone else. I found a plastic chair jammed up beside a vending machine, sat down, and waited. The pain came in waves. I moaned and groaned with the rest of them.
    A nurse appeared and one man called out, “I’m dying, I’m dying!”
    “Wait until the doctor sees you,” she said. “He’ll decide if you’re dying or not.”
    “Let’s try another hospital. It’s taking too long,” said a young girl pulling on her boyfriend’s arm. How serious could her problem be? (Or was he the one with the problem?) I’d seen them smooching hot and heavy in the corner just moments ago.
    After those two left, the group of us that remained kept up one another’s spirits. We began to bond. When someone was called in, we cheered and gave them high-fives. I joked that after this, we should all be friends on Facebook.
    “What are you in for?” I struck up a conversation with a fellow inmate – I mean,
patient
– a guy in his twenties who’d cut his fingerslicing potatoes and had a superficial wound. That happened last night and now his entire hand was red and swollen.
    “Thought I’d come in, get it checked out,” he said cheerfully.
    “May I?” He nodded and I felt his hand, wrist, and arm – all warm. I took a pen out of my purse. As he spoke on his cellphone to his girlfriend, I drew a border outlining the inflamed area that reached to his wrist.
    We sat. One hour, then two. Patients came and went. Paramedics rushed in with a motor vehicle accident victim. I went over to watch the action on the sidelines. When I returned to my seat, I took a look at the guy’s hand. The redness was extending beyond the line I’d drawn at his wrist, to his arm.
    The triage nurse came out. “Telda Shalcot?” she called out.
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