Test of Patients

I won’t bore you with the details. All you need to know is that on a Monday morning two weeks ago I stepped into the Korean Embassy with most of my documents in hand, ready for the final step in my visa application. As soon as I became aware of just how small the embassy was from the inside, I knew I’d made a tactical error.

A few days previously, I had phoned this very embassy to ask about a Tuberculosis test. The woman on the other end of the line had said Yes, along with the rest of my paperwork, I do need to submit a TB test showing that my lungs were clean. However, when I had gone to a hospital near my home to get one, the nurses there informed me that I needed a doctor’s referral before I could get the TB test. Also, it was going to be expensive. It all just seemed like a lot of work that I didn’t want to do.

There’s nothing I can say to justify what I did next, which is to totally ignore the advice from the embassy and try to apply for my visa anyway. I figured that I would feign ignorance. Maybe they would go easy on me and give me the visa anyway. Or maybe they would take my paperwork and just ask me to submit the test at a later date. Or, in the worst case scenario, if they still demanded the TB test before accepting my documents, then fine, I would go and get one from the hospital down the road from the embassy. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

But on that Monday morning two weeks ago I suddenly realized, in the small offices of the Korean embassy, that there was only one non-Korean woman who worked there. There was no doubt in my mind that she was the very same woman whom I had spoken to on the phone. I knew instantly that she would identify me as the man who had called asking about the TB test. She would see right through my ignorance on the matter, and even worse, she would probably be offended that I hadn’t listened to her advice.

This woman hated me, she just didn’t know it yet.

Nevertheless I moseyed on up to the small window and hedged my bets.

“Hi, I’m applying for my visa? I don’t have a TB test though… Maybe… someone called? Or… didn’t?”

The woman behind the window regarded me with shark eyes. “You need a TB test to apply for your visa.”

She wasn’t giving an inch.

“Well the people at the hospital said I’d need a doctor’s referral? I was wondering if there was another way-“

“Then you’ll need to get a doctor’s referral.”

“Oh yes, of course,” I spluttered. “I… I don’t know why I do things. I’m sorry. I’ll be right back.”

I hastily left the embassy, jumped into my car, and drove up the road. I realized I was sweating. I only had an hour and a half before visa applications closed for the day. I hoped the test would be quick.

The hospital up the road from the embassy is quite a sophisticated one. They have dedicated departments for a variety of different afflictions. It seemed the type of place that could treat anything. Unfortunately, this meant that it was also quite a sprawling piece of real estate, and I wasn’t quite sure quite where to go. I made an educated guess and drove towards the x-ray side of the property, parking my car a fair distance from the building because parking was scarce. I wound up having to walk quite far to find the entrance, and even then I needed help from the doorman to direct me where I needed to go. A few corridors and an elevator ride later, I found myself in front of a friendly receptionist. I told her that I needed a TB test, but that I wasn’t sick. I told her what the shark-eyed embassy woman had said about needing a doctor’s referral, and I reiterated that I wasn’t sick, and I only needed it for my visa. The receptionist smiled said that she would be more than happy to help me. If it was for travelling purposes then a referral might not even be necessary. All she needed was my passport.

Shoot.

“I have it!” I declared. “It’s just in my car, which, I assure you, is directly outside this very building!”

Checking my watch, I dashed back to the elevator, down to the ground floor, along corridors, out the entrance, round the building, across the hot parking lot, and to my car. I seized my passport and retraced my steps, now winded and sweatier than ever. I was a crazed mess by the time I returned to the lovely receptionist.

“HA-AGH!” I said, shoving the passport directly into her face. “I have it!”

The woman smiled again and bade me take seat in the waiting room across from her. I was tightly wound. The waiting room seemed crowded, and by my estimation I had to be done in an hour if I wanted to get back to the embassy before applications closed. Fortunately, only a few minutes later my name was called, and I seated myself in front of another desk where a woman, whose hair was tied up in a bun, was typing on a computer. She was polite, and when I told her of my plight she gave me an apologetic smile and said, “I’m afraid you’re going to need a doctor’s referral for that.” I kept my cool, and just nodded dumbly along to what she was saying. “It’s a new law that came into effect last year, ” she explained. “Everyone needs a referral.”

“That is a thing I will do then,” I said, understanding the reality of the situation only as I said it out loud. “I will do a referral. I will go and see a doctor now who will tell me to do this test that I need. Please direct me to the Referring Place.”

“You’ll have to go to Casualty, which is on the other side of the complex,” said the woman with the bun. “You can ask the doorman to call a golf cart to take you there. And once you get the referral you can come straight back here to me.”

I thanked the woman in a tone which, I hoped, communicated that I was not being inconvenienced, not even a little bit, and then began the now-familiar trek to the entrance. I asked the doorman for a golf cart. He nodded dutifully and spoke into his walkie-talkie. A few minutes later a cart pulled up outside, and I got on. We sped away to the other side of the hospital, travelling speeds of up to, but not exceeding, my walking pace.

The golf cart deposited me at the other side of the hospital complex. I thanked the driver and then hurried into reception.

“I NEED A REFERRAL IN ORDER TO GET A TB TEST SO THAT I CAN APPLY FOR A VISA!” I said politely to the woman who greeted me.

“Okay, that shouldn’t be a problem,” she shouted at me, “have you been to this hospital before?”

“I HAVE NOT DONE THAT, NO!” I said amicably.

“Okay, well then we’ll just need to open a file for you.” She reached behind her and snatched up a blue medical folder. “I’m just going to need some basic information from you, if you don’t mind.” Over the next ten precious minutes, I calmly gave the receptionist all the pertinent details about myself that she requested: my address, date of birth, contact details, favourite colour, celebrity crush, Hogwarts house, and blood type. When we were done she sent me around the corner, where a nurse asked me to follow her.

We walked until we found an open bed, and a few moments later the nurse told me that I was her first ever patient. “So I’m not totally sure what we should do here, but just to be safe let’s go through everything.” She then proceeded to take my blood pressure (“Ooh, that’s high!”) and temperature, and she asked me whether I had any allergies, whether I’d been sick lately, whether I’d ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon, whether I’d ever felt like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, and whether I’d ever had covid. At this point, I was still nowhere near an x-ray machine, and I was beginning to lose hope that I would ever get back to the embassy in time.

Once the nurse had performed every test she could think of, she walked away. I checked my watch again. If I could get x-rayed in the next half an hour, I might still have a chance. The nurse came back with a male doctor, who seemed quite authoritative and confident.

“Ah yes, I know precisely what you need,” he said. He put his hands on the bars at the foot of the bed on which I sat, and slowly explained to me that there is a very specific type of TB test that involves pricking the finger. Unfortunately, because of an inoculation that all South Africans receive in infancy, this finger-prick method renders this type of TB test obsolete. The only other option then, he concluded, was for me to get an x-ray.

“Yes I concur with this,” I said patiently, which is to say, I was his patient. In temperament I was not patient at all. “I will do an x-ray, as per your recommendation.”

“That sounds good. Let me just take some blood first.”

I don’t know why the doctor wanted my blood. I only wanted his referral. Were any of these tests necessary?

Once the doctor had my blood, he brought out his notepad, consulted the new blue file containing my pertinent information, and began scribbling something down. I saw him write down what I believed to be the word “x-ray.” But to be fair, he was a doctor, so he could have been writing anything. And then, as he began to sign at the bottom of his notepad, another nurse approached my bed. “Are you Michael?” She asked me.

“I am he,” I replied.

The nurse nodded and turned to the doctor. “There’s been a mixup,” she said to him. “There’s another patient here named Michael. I think you have his file, Doctor.”

The doctor looked at the front of the file, looked at me, and then scratched out everything he had written in his notepad. “We’re just going to have to do this again,” he said.

There was some more discussion between the doctor, the new nurse, and the other nurse, and then, like something out of an absurdist play, they all just left. I don’t know where they went, but as the minutes ticked by I became convinced that I had fallen through the cracks. Perhaps the doctor was expecting the new nurse to take over, while at the same time the new nurse might have thought the doctor was in charge of me now. I’d just about given up on applying for my visa at this stage. I’d have to just go back to the embassy tomorrow. It would mean losing a day, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I still had time.

Still, I wanted to get done, so I got off the bed and approached the reception area where I spied the new nurse. “Is… is everything alright?” I asked. “Is there anything I should be doing now?”

“No don’t worry,” she said, “I’m just waiting for a porter to come and take you to the x-ray center.”

A porter? Why was that necessary? I’d only wanted a referral. I thought that would simply entail a short conversation with a doctor followed by a hastily-scribbled note from them. Why was I needing a porter now? Was I in some kind of Hotel California-esque nightmare?

As I waited to find out exactly what a porter was, I took out my phone and began to look up office hours for the Korean embassy. I was certain that visa submissions were only open until 11.00, but I couldn’t find any record of that online. According to their website, the embassy’s office hours were from 08.00 until noon, when they closed for lunch. This gave me a sliver of hope. Maybe I would still have time to submit my application today after all. Just maybe, this would all turn out all right.

A porter, it turned out, was a man pushing a wheelchair. I stared at the contraption, and in my confusion I ran through the events of the past twenty minutes trying to recall when I had lost the ability to walk.

“I can walk,” I said, more to reassure myself than to engage with the porter. But my will had been weakened by this point. Up until now I had surrendered myself to the medical machine. There was no reason to start fighting it now. I lowered myself into the wheelchair, and was subsequently pushed at speeds equivalent to, and exceeding, that of the golf cart.

The next part happened quickly. I supposed the buildings at this hospital were built in something of a horseshoe pattern, because I was pushed along a corridor and into an elevator, and as we exited a few floors up I locked eyes with the woman with the bun. She had been calling my name. “I’m Michael Bihl,” I said, somewhat feebly. My porter began pulling chairs aside so that he could wheel me into place in front of the woman, but he was causing such a ruckus that I beseeched him to set me free. The porter hesitated, and in that waiting room I hoisted myself to my feet and walked over to the desk under my own power. If any of the hospital patrons were impressed by my little miracle, they did not admit to it.

Even though my running around had been frustrating, the hospital was remarkably efficient. All of my information had already been uploaded to the system, and in no time at all I was ushered into a darkly-lit room where finally, mercifully, I was able to get my tuberculosis test. It didn’t take long, and after a short wait and a financially painful visit to the cashier, I had my TB test in hand. It was about 11.15 at this point. I knew I had missed the deadline to submit my visa, but I was determined to try anyway. I hurried out to my car and sped over to the embassy, arriving at 11.26.

I was greeted by the security guard who had let me in earlier that morning. “Sorry, can I still submit my visa application?” I said.

I was expecting pushback, but the security guard shrugged and said “Okay, but you must hurry. They close in four minutes.”

I was astounded. Somewhere along the line I had misremembered the cut-off time, and now I still had hope. “You can sign in after you’re done,” the security guard called to me as I rushed to the entrance.

The shark-eyed woman was on the phone when I walked in. I knew I had gotten off on the wrong foot with her, and I didn’t want to make things worse by forcing her to work overtime. I quickly approached her window and flung my paperwork in her direction. “Do this now!” I said, being considerate of her time. She put the phone down and looked at me in a way that made me feel that perhaps she hated people. She gathered my papers together, handed some superfluous forms back to me, and then told me how much I had to pay. I handed over an amount that was less than the TB test, and as she filled out my receipt she said, “We’ll notify you when your visa is ready for collection. Processing time is a minimum of two weeks.”

Time froze then for me, and then immediately unfroze because I didn’t want to take up more of that lady’s time. I hustled out of the embassy doors, doing the maths in my head. I had already bought my plane ticket, you see, and I was due to depart twelve days from that day – two days shy of two weeks. Over the next few days I remained hopeful that a miracle would happen, and my visa would be granted to me sooner than two weeks. But no such miracle happened, dear reader.

All this is to say that despite the rush and the madness, I will be missing my departure time after all. I’ve had to postpone my flight by a week, which is a nuisance. Goodbyes are hard, but dragging them out is arguably worse. I had hoped that this would be my last blog before going to Korea, but I suppose that will have to wait until next week. Of course that’s hoping that I get a notification from the woman at the embassy in the next few days, but, if I’m honest, I don’t think she likes me very much.