Urban Bystander
In the valley where forms outnumber beds and committees multiply like stray files, the flagship hospital has perfected a new art: prove the blood, delay the body.
Sajid, a driver from Jhamra, arrived folded in half. The slip said hernia. The plan said mesh repair. The bed tag said GST II, 36, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). They drew blood to open the gate to the Operating Theatre, but the gate never opened.
Blood here does not heal; it migrates. One vial vanished, another evaporated on the way to the lab, a third left no record. He was discharged. No surgery, no painkillers, only four words handed to pain: come next week, try.
He did. Three more days, a vial a day. By sunset he walked out, bent and empty handed. Count them: six vials across two admissions.
Above the skylight, Babloo, Head of Zone III Vigilance, filed his audit of sorrow: specimens six, surgeries nil, patient load ten thousand a day, MRI blinked, ICU breath on credit, institutional pulse, thready. Mirza Chughal Khor, muttered: bureaucracies do not run on blood; they run on the proof it was drawn.
Planned in the 1960s, inaugurated in 1985 as a Centre of Excellence, PIMS offered 1,000 beds for 10,000 patients a day. Outside, the banner repeats Hope Lives Here. Inside, patients bargain with rumour. Inside the wards, everyone is moving and almost nothing moves. Consultants sweep through like weather fronts: a signature and a vanished coat. Juniors run clinics on borrowed time; technicians coax miracles from failing machines. A clerk’s stamp travels faster than a stretcher. Procurement says tomorrow; theatres operate on after you buy the gloves. Somewhere along the chain, a name becomes a number, then a rumour of care.
And then there is Yousaf. Nobody remembers when he first came, some say a decade ago, others the year the MRI went dark. He arrived with kidney stones and left with permanence. The stones went; the pain stayed. Supplies were missing, doctors absent. Somewhere between waiting and treatment, Yousaf slipped from time’s ledger, tangled in process, condemned to pain. Asked for directions, he answers: OPD left, Pharmacy right, hope around the corner. Some say Yousaf is still a patient; others say he is a story the building tells itself.
Up the hill, the Secretary Health paces beneath a yellow tube light, sleeves rolled, tie askew, a man trying to move a system that taught itself judo. Files swim toward Inter Departmental Clarification. Pedigrees outrank prescriptions: uncles, cousins, generals, politicians. The elevator stops at two floors: Pending and Press Conference. From the sill, Mirza grins: reform is excellent, if delayed. Friction keeps the machine from bleeding out.
Shortages are chronic. Theatres received half their supplies while attendants bought the rest. Antivenom was in stock but no ventilator free when a child arrived breathless. And the gravest note in this ledger: Shah Taj, twenty-seven, a mother who came to deliver and never left. She and others were given expired anaesthesia; she seized, arrested, and died. For two days the truth was kept under fluorescent light. Then the outrage, suspensions, seals, inquiries and silence. The minutes survived; the mother did not. Sajid did not so much choose as escape. With friends and a sack of borrowed money, he found a small private hospital near home. Anaesthesia was cold. The mesh repair took less than the evening news. The hernia was removed. The debt inserted. Both operations were successful.
Back in Islamabad, the building glows at dusk, lit by tube lights, dimmed by files, powered by expectation on backup. Somewhere in the hall, Yousaf shuffles past the silver lamp that calls no names. Babloo mutters: six vials, no theatre. Mynah sighs: pain public, healing outsourced. The sign outside still glows: Hope Lives Here.
Inside, the clipboard remains undefeated.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
