It all began with a trip to the Emergency Room...

Midnight. Darwin airport. Four hours until I had to be back at the airport for the 6.30am flight to Dili. I had a choice to make: four hours in a hotel room trying to sleep or the emergency room?
It wasn’t so much an “emergency”, as a: I’ve got the beginnings of an illness that if I don’t act fast, I may regret it when I get off the plane in a country where I don’t know the language or the health care situation. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I’d spent most of the flight from Sydney to Darwin in the toilet.
The emergency room was busy. There were lots of sick-looking people sitting in uncomfortable-looking chairs. Some were groaning. Most were quietly watching a television mounted high in the middle of the room. RPA was on, which I thought a bit unseemly for an emergency room. I approached the nurse who was sitting behind a large glassed-off reception desk. I was feeling somewhat guilty that I wasn’t exactly an “emergency” patient, but I explained my situation and she processed me without emotion. I happened to notice a brochure sitting on the counter. It said:

While you’re waiting, we’re saving lives.

I took a seat and prepared for a long night of bad television and a stiff neck.

After only about an hour, my name was called. “Wow!” I thought, “That wasn’t too bad after all. They must have taken sympathy on me because I’ve got a plane to catch.”. I did wonder what the other patients must be thinking though... “This girl waltzes in before us, and she doesn’t even look sick!”. I almost thought to speak up and say, “Oh, no! These people were before me,” but my bloodshot-eyed stupor took away all compassion.

The doctor was friendly enough, until she informed me that she was only taking my “obs”. She poked and prodded, wrote some notes and then directed me promptly back to the infomercials. As I resumed my seat, I thought I noticed a snigger from an old lady in a wheelchair.

By this time it was about 2.00 am. I had to be at the airport in 2½ hours. All I could think about was bed. Also by this time, I seemed to be feeling a bit better, which really made me feel guilty about being in the emergency room. I seriously contemplated walking out, getting in a cab and going back to the hotel to sleep. I’m not sure if it was my own resolution that did it, or the fact that I was mesmerised by the “Sambarobics” (the latest Latino weight-loss craze that everybody’s doing!) on the TV, but I decided to wait it out.

There is one distinct difference between waiting in an emergency room and other doctors’ surgeries: drunk people. They make the wait so much more entertaining. Watching the antics of one young man in particular - I can say with utmost certainty – was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep in my plastic chair. He appeared to have a broken nose, and he was in the (real) emergency section. He came storming out from behind the reception area, swearing and saying he wasn’t going to wait around anymore because everyone was taking too long. He walked out. The ambulance officers didn’t try to stop him. Neither did the nurses. After about five minutes, he walked back in, blood pissing everywhere. “I blew my nose!” he said, “I know you told me not to, but there was so much f...ing blood up there, I had to get it out. I promise I won’t do it again. Can you let me back in?”

“Sure,” said the nurse opening the door, unamused.

While you’re waiting, we’re dealing with dickheads.

The other thing to do in the emergency room is to get to know the system. It didn’t take me long to work out what was going on. First, there’s the “small door” for “obs”, which takes about two minutes for people to come in and out of. It's basically there to get people's hopes up. Then there’s the “big doors”. When people get called into the “big doors”, they are there for a bit longer, but when they come out, they go through the “automatic doors” and go home. It was about 3.30 – I had just finished kissing my sleep goodbye - when I was finally called into the “big doors”. I was led to a hospital bed, told to sit on the chair next to it and that: “There’s no doctor at the moment, but we’re fast tracking you and you’ll see the first doctor available”.

Fast tracking me? Huh?

I waited, sitting on the chair, looking longingly at the bed next to me.

In all, I saw the doctor for approximately five minutes. She was nice enough. I got the drugs.
What I didn’t realise until my third day of building intimate relationships with the toilets of Dili, was that she gave me the wrong ones.

I had my first little Dili adventure in the local farmasia (chemist), my Tetum phrase book in hand. After (unsuccessfully) describing my symptoms to the girls behind the counter, a friendly man helped to explain them in Chinese to the Chinese doctor, who had come out to see what all the commotion was about. Within minutes, everyone in the shop knew all about my medical condition, but I had the (right) medicine. The doctor sent me on my way, but not before she had tut-tutted at the sight of my original medicine bottle, saying: “These no work!”.