free health care

last weekend, i banged up my foot pretty bad on a horseback ride from hell. all of our experiences mark us, especially the bad ones, and this one marked me up good. the next morning, i thought my foot needed some professional attention, just to make sure there were no breaks or fractures. so i spent $2.50 on a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the public hospital’s emergency room. after arriving, i sat on some repaired stadium seats outside, under mango trees, until i could check in and put my name on a sheet; there was no paperwork to fill out beyond that. inside smelled like our dog’s kennel, but the air-conditioning and its coolness blinded out the bad smells and felt like sweet cold jesus all over my sticky summertime body. i sat down again on some old bus seating that was being repurposed as waiting room chairs and looked around at all the other patients. we were a mixed group, icing appendages with wet bandanas and soggy washcloths. a young man with two gunshot wounds in his leg was hauled in on a stretcher made out of a hammock. an old woman with hairy legs limped in using a long umbrella for a cane. a nurse called my name (Tilly) and i hobbled through some swinging doors to sit down in triage. the doctors were awesome and cracked funny jokes with me about horses being asses. they took three x-rays on a jenky old x-ray machine and i waited for results. another nurse called my name (Tally) to tell me no broken bones, just a bad bang-up job. i left with a bandage and some more ice and limped out to catch a taxi home, which cost me $2.25.