Observant Participatory Exercise 1

Eagle Ridge Hospital Emergency Room, January 12, 2009. 11.45 a.m.

I chose the waiting room of emergency section of Eagle Ridge Hospital in Couquitlam. I did not like to choose some very ordinary place such as street or library which often people do not do something special. And since I am just about four month in Vancouver and consequently in an English language environment, I do not know many public places here. I thought the emergency part of a hospital can be a good choice to me because I can observe people in a relaxed manner and people who are in the hospital have something to observe rather than talk. In fact, regarding to my language obstacles, I preferred a place there is as minimum talking as possible. In addition, I thought an emergency waiting room of a hospital can be interesting because of urgent problems and it is possible I encounter many different situations which I cannot see in other places.
It was not my first time I went to the emergency section of Eagle Ridge hospital. The first one was approximately two months ago for a few minutes when my spouse wanted to receive his receipt from the reception to present for the insurance.
The emergency part is located in the back street of the main entrance of the Eagle Ridge hospital in Gilford Street in Couquitlam. When I entered to the emergency, the first thing I saw was the reception part where a nurse in a light blue dressing was talking to the people who were in a queue in front of the desk. I saw the left part where 24 chairs were put for patients and companions. In the 11.45 of a Monday it was not crowded and I had a chance to choose an appropriate place to sit down and observe. I sat down in a chair where I can observe everybody and everything from that angle. Although I was not able to see the entrance door of the room from that place, I was easy to watch everybody who enter or exit of the door after a few seconds. All chairs were put around the room except six of them in the middle of the room in order to use the place as effective as possible. There was also a paid phone in the room and a machine for getting junk foods. When I entered there were 14 people sitting down and two individuals in the queue to talk in the reception desk. Almost everybody is silent but a boy in the age of 18-19 is talking to the cell phone as loudly as his voice break the silence of the room. After about five minutes a nurse comes and calls the boy to enter to the ward. When he leaves there is no other voice except the nurse in the reception desk which her voice is similar to whispering rather than talking. I cannot distinguish her words.
Six people are reading magazines which are in four different small tables in the room. A 10-12 years old boy is sleeping in the chair and others are sitting and seem thinking or observing the room. There is a television set at the corner of the room close to the ceiling. It is off and seems it is a long time it has not turned on. Beneath the Television set there are 5 empty boxes in this corner of the room which makes it as a warehouse. In the wall next to this corner there is a picture written on: “McHappy Day, May 16th 2000.” These combination make me to feel this room is messy and nobody pay enough attention to keep here as a lively and fresh place. The cell phone of a man who is sitting next to me, rings. He talks for a while and decides to turn it off. I can hear his voice that he thinks about turning his cell phone loudly!
There are a three members of a family here; mother, more than 40 with the blonde hair and white jacket, father with an unusual big moustache and a sharp purple t-shirt and a 14-15 son in a black shirt. It seems the boy is the patient because he wears a white paper ribbon around his left wrist. Three other people are wearing this kind of strip in their wrists.
This place is totally different from my expectations. It is just as an ordinary doctor office or clinic. It seems to me none of the patients have serious problems. I compared it to one of the hospitals I had seen the emergency room in my country, Iran. It was really an emergency part. One night I had a strong headache and I went there. It was about less than half an hour I was there and I encounter three patients who had car accidents and they were covered with the blood, one other patient had drunken a poisonous wine and was screaming so loudly, another one was about 30 year old man who had a heart attack and they transferred him to the CPR room and all his families members were crying. The emergency room of Eagle Ridge hospital was totally different from what I had in my mind of an emergency room in a hospital.
After about half an hour I feel cannot breathe easily. I look at the ceiling. It seems to me it is short and the air cannot go around the room. I don’t like to stay there anymore. While I feel I have problem in my breathing I remember about 10 months ago where my father was hospitalized and the hospital became the most horrible place in the world for me. He was six days there and those days were the worst days in whole my life; The days when every days at the morning I was not sure I can meet him alive again; the days of continuous crying, praying, screaming and even the days when I thought about the suicide for the first time in my life. It was the worst days and when I sit here and watch people with ordinary problems, I remind those days and my breath block…