My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like a Saint-Tropez lothario. The nurse rubs his foot to bring blood to his veins, and I lean over the cot to feed the greedy midget, who squawks just once as he’s stabbed.
I watch the drops bulge and drip and I puzzle over the NHS and its mysteries. Why do nurses collect baby blood in glass straws with an opening no wider than a pin? It’s like an impossible task set by a whimsical tyrant.
Even more surreal is the way the NHS handles patient records. Because the midget and I have visited so many parts of the NHS — maternity wards, A&E, GP surgeries, neonatal units — we’ve become a crack two-man investigative team. Did you know that every hospital keeps separate records for the same patient, and that they don’t, often can’t, share them, even in an emergency? I had no idea.
My boy was born in a different hospital from this one, on the other side of town.
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