Furnace Blast

I am once again accompanying a family member in the hospital, because illness does not take into account the seasons nor the weather. From one hospital, the family member has been taken to another. This is all absolutely normal. There are three public hospitals in Santiago. One is the the Clinical Hospital, also a teaching hospital. Then there are two other small hospitals, the Provincial, also known as Conxo because of the neighborhood it’s in, and the Gil Casares, whoever he was. They take the overflow of admitted patients and also have outclinics for the able. The Clinical is about twenty years old, large and with modern fixtures. It replaced the original Hospital Xeral, the original building of which was opened in the middle of the nineteenth century. Now, that old building is all that’s left of the Xeral. The others, which were built some years later, were demolished soon after the hospital was shut down. The building boom was at its height then. But the crisis arrived and now the oldest building stands abandoned, boarded up, its only residents feral cats.

My relative first arrived in the Emergency Room, which is in the Clinical. Yesterday was a hot day, but inside the temperature was agreeable. I stepped outside a couple of times and hied myself inside quickly. In Santiago the temperature was well above ninety degrees Farenheit, but in the south of Galicia, it reached one hundred. Too hot. We were told he was to be admitted and already had a bed waiting. But we had to wait until late in the day till he was taken to it. I had thought it would have been in the Clinical. But the ambulance paramedic showed up to transport him to the hospital over at Conxo. I followed in the car, air conditioning on full blast even though it was a short little drive.

When I arrived and went inside, cool air beautifully enveloped me. But as I stepped out of the elevator on the second floor, where the room was located, the coolness was not there. In its place was a steamy warmth. I found the room, westerly, and stepped inside. It was a bread oven. The sun was beating on that side of the building, and though the windows and door were open to create cross-currents, it must have been as hot as outside, or even hotter. The three men in that room were partly covered with thin hospital sheets, coverlets and blankets shoved aside. One of the shades was down, but it didn’t help. I stepped in and immediately water drops appeared on my skin.

This hospital had a makeover done to its façade last year. New windows were installed, and the exterior was covered in tough plastic panels to better protect from the elements. But the one, essential thing in a hospital of the twenty-first century was missing: climate control. There is heating in the winter, too much, usually; but how can there be no air conditioning in the summer, if only for the patients’ comfort?

I’m sure that when the exterior was remodeled, plenty of pockets were lined. There was enough public money for that, but there isn’t enough to improve patient comfort to help them heal faster. I suppose the friends of the lawmakers that distribute public money through public contracts don’t have any company that deals with refrigeration or climate control.  That is the only reason I can see for having patients strewn in their beds, doubly uncomfortable from their illness and from the heat. Mid-twentieth century hospitals in the twenty-first century. Only in Spain.