A Second Opinion.

When you say the word "hospital" it conjures up images of packed emergency rooms, busy specialists, 24 hour frantic rushes and whirring machines that make beeping noises.

The hospital is the place that you go when you absolutely need help. You know that it's going to be there for you.

Today was not what I had expected at all.

We had heard stories about how the medical care was non-existent in Samthar. In the back of my mind I figured that people were merely speaking in hyperbole, or that they were turning a blind eye to existing programs.

We set up a field clinic literally in the field behind the 'hospital'. There was no reason to fear the competition, as the facility looked abandoned. A wooden skeleton of a building in the middle of the mountains.

Closed. On a Tuesday morning.

As the patients lined up we realized that there were actually people looking at us curiously from inside the hospital. We decided to go and have a look.

The government runs this primary health center. There's supposed to be a nurse and a doctor stationed there. The nurse is there, she's the one who was looking out the window, but the doctor is nowhere to be seen. The nurse is in her 20s and speaks perfect English. She looks bored out of her mind. Luckily she has some friends hanging out with her.

"Where is the doctor?" we ask.

"Oh, he is not here. He's in Calcutta. He is getting married."

Calcutta is 23 hours away.

"How often is he here?"

"He is often here." says the nurse. It's not what we've heard.

The nurse is not from here. She's from a city a few hours away. She's just finished nursing school and this remote outpost is an extremely easy and extremely high paying government job. She clearly misses the city life.

Perhaps she catches on to the nature of our inquiries, perhaps she's drawn away by a pressing concern, either way... about two minutes after our conversation she's gone. Disappeared along with her friends. The last thing we hear is them talking in English about how Facebook is way better than Orkut and Hi5 on their mobile phones back in the city.

The hospital is once again empty.

Thankfully, the chain locks on the doors are left unlocked... so we decide to go inside and have a look.

Generally breaking into abandoned hospitals in foreign countries is a bad idea, but in a place where the police are over 5 hours away, there's little realistic concern.

It's a dilapidated five room building. We enter the doctor's office first. It's immediately clear that this office has never been occupied. There are absolutely no files on the shelves. There's a layer of dust over everything. There are no medical instruments. The fireplace has never been used.

The next room over is what appears to be the pharmacy. There are a few boxes of antibiotics and what appears to be logbooks. We open them up. They've seen three patients in the last month. Meanwhile, there are twenty people already lined up in the lot where our clinic has just started outside.

We also find a staff attendance sheet. All of the dates have been filled in. It looks incredibly suspect. Especially since the building is clearly unused. And there are arguably no staff.

There's a beautiful red wedding invitation on the desk. It's by far and away the only thing in the building that's not completely covered in dust. It's stunning. Thick dark red paper with gold leaf imprint. The kind of thing that costs exactly as much as it looks.

We leave the pharmacy and walk over to the only patient room in the building. It looks like a torture chamber from the middle ages. A wooden plank bed. A rusty crib. A wine bottle in the corner. An unintentionally reusable IV drip hanging off of a nail on the wall. It's filthy. It's not the kind of place where you'd want anyone to be sick.

The death-row green 'operating room' is empty. No furniture. No electrical outlets. Nothing.

At dinner later on, we find out that the pharmacy is provided with free medicines from the government. The pharmacists sell these for whatever price they can and pocket the money.

Perhaps tomorrow if the doctor is in, I'll be able to ask him what this is all about so that we can clear up this misunderstanding.