Yesterday I saw something that deeply disturbed me, and it was a mother who was experiencing the exact same issues I had with our pediatric clinic’s record system. I came in, sat down with my son, and saw this black mother with two young sons. She looked upset, and she was yelling at the male nurse. I listened.
She said that it wasn’t right that the clinic had lost her son’s medical records, and he needed to get their checkup. She told the male nurse about how she had to take the day off work, and she’d spent all this time waiting at the clinic. She said she couldn’t afford to take another day off work, and she would be fired if she had to come back again. The woman sounded worried and scared.
I looked at the male nurse, and he had looked nervous. The mother went to sit down with her two children. Then I saw the nurse get onto the phone. A few minutes later, the hospital security came in. The mother was reading a magazine, and when the hospital security team came in, she looked up, and her face got tired. She assumed a very meek facial expression, and told her two boys to come with her. The hospital security team escorted her out.
I thought about the change in her posture. Her shoulders had slumped down, and her face was worn, exhausted. Only moments earlier, she had been yelling in frustration, trying to get her son seen. She was doing what any mother would be doing, standing up for her children, and making sure he was able to get his checkup.
I went to the counter to check in. They couldn’t find my son’s record in the system. The male nurse apologized, and said that he’d call the insurance company to resolve the issue. He was polite, deferential, and he hadn’t brushed me off. His treatment of me was different from the way he’d treated the black mother.
And it wasn’t fair.