Since I involuntarily
volunteered to test the Bolivian medical system, JN so kindly decided to take a
turn and test the local system on this trip.
I knew something was
wrong when I spotted a taxi slowly driving up to L’s place in the early
morning. When I woke up, JN jogging shoes were missing so I assumed that he had
gone for a run. He had been jogging for about an hour and was about five
minutes from the apartment when he stepped on a metal sheet that was covering a
hole on the sidewalk. What happened next would have been a great scenario for a
Tom and Jerry cartoon, but rather painful to a mortal human being. The metal sheet popped up, his one legged
slipped in the hole and he stopped falling when his leg rammed into and was
sliced open on a ginzu knife-like sharp metal edge.
According to him, he
laid dazed half in and half out of the hole while bleeding profusely and had to
watch to make sure that his fingers did not get crushed by the little old
Japanese women barely swerving around to get by him on their bicycle. It took
about three minutes before a woman stopped to help. She asked him in Japanese
if he wanted to go to the hospital or if he wanted her to call a taxi. He
preferred to come back to the apartment so she hailed a cab and helped him in.
He came limping up to
the door, blood running down his leg, and before he explained anything, wheezed
out that I should pay the taxi driver. As he was explaining his story, L and
were looking at his leg, and it didn’t look good. I suggested that we cancel
our lunch date with our friends in Osaka
before he went to the hospital. “Hospital,”
he said with blood still running down his leg, “I don’t need a hospital.”
Five minute later, L
and JN were bundled off into another taxi and were on their way to the
hospital. The taxi driver a friendly guy and started up a nice conversation
with them on the drive there. He mentioned in a casual way that oh yeah, he had
seen JN lying in the hole. L said incredulously in Japanese “and you didn’t stop
to help?” He answered back that he had a customer and couldn’t stop.
When they got to the emergency room, they had
to wait a relative short time before they were ushered in to see a doctor. He
was a kind man who spoke a few words of English and after studying JN’s x-rays
and cleaning out his wound; he determined that no bones or ligaments were
respectively broken or torn. But the cut was almost to the bone and needed five
stitches.
The total cost of the
visit was roughly $120 and the antibiotics and really weak painkillers added up
to $22.
So we didn’t make it
to Osaka today
and I don’t think we will make it there tomorrow either.
We are going to wait
three days to see if he can walk a little bit before we consider coming home early.
