Yesterday started out as a glorious, glorious day in Paris. It was sunny yet cool, and we all had French lessons planned (at 10, 12, 2, and 4). Mine was at 10, and Andrew's was a one-hour lesson starting at 12, so I waited for him by sitting in a cafe along Boulevard St. Germain, reading a magazine, drinking an espresso, eating a pain aux raisins, and watching the world go by. I was feeling extremely Parisian and extremely civilized. After Andrew's class, he and I walked around a bit, then went shopping for a new video camera (the one we had was very old, and finally gave up the ghost on this trip). So we went into the FNAC store on Boulevard St. Germain, looked around, picked one out, and found a salesman so we could buy it. He looked it up on his screen and discovered he didn't have it, but I asked if there was one in the FNAC near Montparnasse, and he checked and there was, so Andrew and I took the Metro to that store. We found a salesman, asked for the camera, got it, paid for it, and came home. Andrew was very excited because he wanted to make skateboarding videos for Youtube (there's that "s" word again), and I was also, because I had a new electronic device to explore. Be on the look out for video!
Suzie's class went until 4, but she didn't get home until almost 5. Immediately after she opened the door to the apartment, she broke down sobbing. It turned out that she had fallen down the stairs at the St. Michel Metro station. The stairs down to the No. 4 line are dramatic, in that they sweep down and make a 180 degree turn from top to bottom. As a consequence, at the side of the stairs nearest the sharp part of the turn, the steps get very narrow, and Suzie, who was wearing more fashionable shoes with slicker souls, apparently missed a step. As a result, her left leg below her knee got caught underneath her as she bounced down seven or eight steps, pounding her left leg and her foot on each step. In addition, she had a deep puncture wound under he knee that was bleeding profusely. She was hurt badly enough and in enough of a shock that the pompiers came to give her assistance; they were going to take her to the hospital but she refused to go, not wanting to pay the bill for the ambulance and the emergency care that would follow. (They made her sign a piece of paper saying that she freely and voluntarily chose not to go to the hospital even though they had advised her to.) So she got herself up, in extreme pain, and held herself together until she could take the Metro all the way home. When she got home, she just let it all go.
She was in bad shape, still in a sort of shock, with dried blood and scrapes all down her leg, which was already starting to turn that yellowish-grey color presaging a bad, deep bruise. She was sobbing little, short cries, and was in great pain. I didn't think she'd broken anything (since she walked back from the Metro), but I did fear that she would need to be on crutches for a while. After she explained what had happened, we had to decide what to do about her injuries. Andrew and I went down to the doctor's office on the second floor of our building (even though he was a specialist in "maladies du coeur" [a great title for a short story, no?]), we thought he might now a general physician, but there was no one in the office. Next we knocked on the door of our neighbors, but the nanny who was there taking care of the neighbors' baby didn't know of any doctors in the area. She did, however, give us a card that had the number of "SOS Medecins" on it -- the group of doctors who will come to your house in case of emergencies. So, not knowing what other choice we had, Suzie called them and they dispatched a doctor to our house.
He arrived fairly quickly, a dour, bedside-manner-less man in his late 50s, with an old-fashioned medical bag. Suzie explained what had happened; his reaction was that she should have gone to the hospital like the pompiers had suggested, a not really very helpful comment. He then looked at her leg, straightened it, pushed on it, and told her that she needed to get an x-ray and a tetanus shot. He put a small bandage over her large puncture wound, wrote out a prescription for pain medicine, topical antibiotic, gauze and tape ... and a tetanus shot. He explained that we needed to get the tetanus syringe and vaccine from the pharmacy, then take it to a clinic to have someone inject it (now there's an efficient system). He wrote down the address (although not the name) of an x-ray clinic, gave us a hand-written receipt explaining that we had paid 90 euros for his services (I can't wait to see what Pacificare does with that), gave us the prescription for the pharmacy, wrote out an order for the x-ray, and left. Not exactly a friendly sort, and he frankly didn't do much, although, in his defense, there wasn't really a lot he could do about the situation while in our living room.
The next task as to go to the pharmacy. Since Suzie was hobbling and in great pain, Andrew and I were dispatched. We turned the corner and went diagonally up the street out our apartment window, to a small pharmacy we had seen. I had a fair amount of trepidation about having to explain everything, given my level of French, and even more trepidation about how much all the items on the list were going to cost us in the absence of insurance. My fears grew when I walked through the door and saw the proprietor, a plump, elderly woman with only a minority of her teeth remaining, speaking in a gruff, raspy voice with another customer, apparently not happily, since she kept folding and unfolding and pounding a piece of paper on the counter. Oh, no, I thought, I doubt she speaks a word of English (an observation that proved to be true), and she looks as approachable as a turkey vulture. I almost feared her being done with the transaction with the other customer. But finally she finished, and in my bad French, halting at first but, if I may say so myself, more fluid as I went along, I explained the whole thing, Suzie's getting hurt, the doctor, the prescription, and so on. And as a reminder that first appearances can be deceiving, she turned out to be extremely kind and helpful, looking up the number of a nurse who could give the tetanus shot, and giving me the number and address of the x-ray clinic. She even asked if I needed some documentation to give to the insurance company back in the US. I said yes, and she proceeded to ring up our bill. Pain medicine, tetanus shot, antibiotic, all at retail. I was afraid to look at the bill, and when I did, I was astounded.
Eleven euros twenty. For everything. I looked at the bill, then looked at her and said, "Ce n'est pas possible!" But there it was, in black and white.
So I returned home feeling very successful and useful, irrationally proud that I'd managed to get what we needed, and more. From that point on, everything was better: Suzie's pain started to lessen, her spirits started to return, she slept well, the next morning she had much more mobility in her leg, the bad, bad bruises never came, the nurse we called came to our house and gave Suzie the tetanus shot for 10 euros, plus gave us the name of a good doctor in the neighborhood for the next time we needed one. We even managed to finally win our 3-week battle with France Telecom over our cell phones which, as it is almost 10 p.m., will have to await another day (the short version is that Suzie got the manager, blasted him pretty good [she was really, really pissed that she didn't have cell phone service when she fell], and explained that we were not leaving until the phones worked, which did the trick, although it took over an hour to get there). We celebrated with a late lunch at a nice cafe, then came home to pack for our trip to Toulouse.
Which begins tomorrow ... so stay tuned for our reports from the south.
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