Hospitalization - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 173

asked us a few questions, and then told us where to wait. Apparently they felt that car crash
survivors, heart attack victims and people who had fallen off of scaffolding took prior-
ity. My rational mind knew they were right, but, nevertheless, you can imagine how hard
the waiting was. And there was the matter of going out to renew the parking ticket which
warned you in no uncertain terms that you would be towed away if you didn't renew it
every 45-minutes.
Eventually, a nice man in white smock came over to us. He looked at our daughter's face
and went off to get something. He came back with a latex glove that he proceeded to blow
up and tie off; then he drew a smiley face on it with his marker and gave it to Siena to
hold. She accepted it, happy to have a 'doon', her word for balloon. Then we all went in-
to a private room where he began cleaning up her cuts and scrapes, disinfecting them and
assuring us that she was basically okay. Her nose would turn black and blue, her split lip
would heal with a very slight scar. He explained that he could stitch it, but that it would
obviously be traumatic for her to do so and not guaranteed to leave less of a scar. So, he
sold us on a butterfly band-aid and antibiotic ointment.
We came around to questions about where we were from, and he asked our daughter her
name. “Siena.” He was incredulous and delighted that we had actually named our daughter
after his city. He wanted her to promise to join his contrada when she was older, because it
was the best one. (Siena is divided into seventeen contradas , neighborhoods that compete
furiously against one another in the annual Palio horse races.)
Finally,heasked ifwehadanational health insurance card.Weexplained that wehadcom-
prehensive health insurance in the States and pulled out our cards, but he dismissed them
with a wave of his hand. He told us that we would have to pay directly at the cashier as
we exited for the parking lot. He gave us our treatment invoice to bring to the cashier. We
thanked him sincerely, and he reminded Siena again about joining his contrada when she
was older as we said our good-bys.
As the cashier's window they confirmed that we had no Italian health coverage, and they
explained that we would have to pay directly. The clerk looked up a couple of codes,
entered some information and printed out our bill. He showed me the amount in Lira to
pay. It came to about $17.00 in American money. Including the antibiotic cream.
***
You can only marvel at a system that charges you to park in an emergency lot and threatens
to tow you away, while providing health care to the uninsured for about 2% of what one