LIVING IN FRANCE

My Phone Rang In The Wee Hours & Life Dragged Me From The Desk. It’s Days Since I Last Wrote A Story

Sometimes that’s a good thing . . .

It’s been a crazy few days. This morning, I sat down to write and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, an uninterrupted day to catch up. Then I looked at the story I’d been working on just a few days earlier — before life got in the way — and felt underwhelmed

Whatever excitement I’d had was gone. No sparks to fan into flames. No sparks at all. Perhaps I could work on a different story? I had a look through my list of ideas. No thrills there either.

I got up from the desk, went to the kitchen and grabbed a huge slice of last night’s pizza, and crammed it into my mouth. Then I ripped the plastic wrapping from a bag of madeleines and crammed the cake in beside the pizza

I have quite a large mouth.

Sometimes massive amounts of carbs will get the writing momentum going. That’s a lie. Just an excuse to eat cold pizza and other junk food.

Life can be incredibly annoying. First, it drags me away from my true and exalted purpose — creating brilliant stories of staggering genius for everyone to heap lavish praise upon— then it allows me time to create again, but turns all my efforts do dross.

Life can drag me away for numerous reasons. Mundane tasks such as grocery shopping, for example. I hate that. If there is absolutely nothing in the refrigerator but a bottle of rosé and mouldy leftovers from two weeks ago, so be it. As long as the cupboard still contains rice and lentils, I will survive. Once the rosé is gone, I may allow life to interrupt.

Recently, life interrupted in a rather traumatizing way.

A late-night or just before dawn phone call, is hardly ever good news. Back in the States, as my mother grew increasingly fragile with age, a ringing phone at an unexpected time filled me with dread — but at least I knew the ropes and spoke the language.

It’s a slightly different story here in France.

In the wee hours of Friday morning, a phone call at some ungodly hour woke me from sleep. Heart already hammering, I grabbed the phone and saw my downstairs neighbour’s name on the screen.

She’s in her mid-seventies and has a variety of health problems.

“Please call an ambulance,” she gasped.

I’ve lived in France for nine years, seen lists of the emergency numbers, knew I should write them down, memorise them. I hadn’t — and you know why. It’s all about my true and exalted purpose.

So I Googled emergency phone numbers in France, found a number to call, and got a recording in French that I didn’t understand, all the while throwing on clothes so that I could go downstairs to my neighbor.

“Help,” she said as I walked into her bedroom, phone still at my ear. Blood was everywhere — smeared over her face and her hands, pools of it on the bedclothes. Bloody tissues around the bed.

Her dog, barking nonstop, ran around the room jumping on and off the bed. I grabbed his collar and shut him in her spare bedroom.

I found another number and tried again. This time a recording in English told me to wait on line. I waited. A guy came on and rattled something off in French. I asked if he spoke English. He didn’t. I dipped into my bag of French and explained that blood was coming from my neighbour’s mouth. He asked more questions, some I understood.

My neighbor groaned from the bedroom.

“Vite,” I said to the guy on the phone. “Vite vite, s’il vous plait.”

Then a doctor came on the line. No English. More dips into my bag of French. Hemorrhage sounds almost the same in French, so I understood the question. I didn’t think my neighbour was hemorrhaging, I said, but there was a lot of blood.

Beaucoup de sang.

The pompiers were on their way, he said.

I went back into the bedroom and told my neighbor. Then I took a closer look at her face. The blood seemed to be mostly around her nose. I asked her to open her mouth. No blood there. I suggested perhaps it was just a nose bleed. She said she’d also coughed up blood.

The pompiers arrived. So had half the neighbourhood, all crowded around in dawn’s early light. The pompiers, bristling with equipment, trouped upstairs. Yellow jackets, navy uniforms, they all seemed very large and imposing. As they attached my neighbour to various machines, I stood to one side, answering questions.

Yes, she has a bad heart. I clutched my chest. Cœur is one of those words I know but find hard to pronounce. She also has a . . .I stopped, no idea what pacemaker was in French.

I looked at the pompier for a moment. He looked at me.

“Stimulateur cardiaque?”

I nodded. More questions. The pompiers looked at the monitors, conferred with each other. I looked at the monitors. They looked normal. . .at least based on what I’ve gleaned from watching a lot of TV medical dramas.

The tension in the room eased. The pompier said he thought the blood was from my neighbour’s nose and he didn’t think the situation was serious, but a doctor was on the way to do a further evaluation.

More arrivals, the small bedroom was now wall-to-wall people. All chattering away in French. The doctor arrived, slightly annoyed to discover that she and her team had been called out for a nosebleed. Then she pinched my neighbour’s nose between two fingers — vigorously enough to cause a squeal of pain — and said this is what must be done if the bleeding started again.

So that was Friday.

Yesterday, I drove my neighbour to her doctor’s to see what might have caused the nosebleed. The doctor wanted some blood tests which meant a drive to a laboratory in the next town — that’s the way it’s done in France. We had trouble finding the lab and by the time we arrived it was closed for lunch — also the way things are in France — so my neighbour treated me to lunch — an excellent cheeseburger and a glass of white wine — while we waited for the lab to open.

An hour or so later, we headed home. A hectic day, but it wasn’t over yet . . .

A few hours later, the doctor called with the lab results. Perhaps because of the nosebleed, my neighbour’s hemoglobin was so low she needed an emergency blood transfusion. This would require a trip back to the doctor’s office to pick up a letter of authorisation, then on to the hospital — in another town.

It was just beginning to get dark, as I left my neighbour at the hospital where she would receive a transfusion and whatever else was necessary. She stayed overnight and arrived home by taxi this morning feeling much better.

Friday, she has an appointment with her cardiologist. I’m off the hook though, a taxi will pick her up, free of charge. That’s also the way it works in France.

So while life took me away from the story I was going to write, it gave me another one instead. While it’s all been a bit stressful, I’m happy I was there to help — I would hope that if I ever had to make a wee hours call for help, I’d also find a sympathetic ear.

And now, back to my true and exalted raison de etre.

Other stories about the medical side of living in France

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