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At your service day and night Saturdays Sundays holiday around the clock and around the calendar ospital was your service. The American Hospital Association and its member hospitals in your community they present your service transcribe series in the public interest designed to take you behind the scenes in your hospital. The sun rose that morning the same as it had every morning for the forty three years of your life time but this morning it was different this day was going to be different you look he's only at the familiar bed room at your wife still sleeping look with that sharp awareness as if maybe you weren't going to see them again ever then you're fully awake with a sudden remembrance of why this day is it's funny tonight I won't be here in this room tonight I'll be somewhere around what did you say. I'm sorry Betty I guess I was just sort of talking to myself you said in the. Jim are you worrying about it that much all I'm not really worrying there it's just that well I've never been in the hospital and and so you are worried now don't try to tell me different Jim Roberts I guess I know OK so maybe I am after all you were in the hospital when the kids were born you know what to expect and with my appendix and Jim I know that you do worry even though you believe everything is going to be alright yeah something to think about parting company with your gallbladder gosh a year ago I didn't even know what a gallbladder was and now know it'll be all right just try not to worry I'll go to the hospital with you this afternoon oh no I go by myself but I now please Betty I've got to go down to the shop and get things lined up last minute things then I'll just grab a cab and go to the house but that seems sort of well maybe it does but that's the way I want it a lot of things I need to think about honey and well I'll just grab a cab the way. Yes you have things to think about and things to do alone you hoped your wife's feelings weren't hurt for you didn't mean it that way but there was that last look over your shop not much of a business maybe but you'd work hard for it and build it up to something then a look over your insurance and your will things you wouldn't want better to know you were doing sure you knew everything was going to be all right but well it didn't pay to tempt Providence by leaving things I'm done and sometimes things do go wrong in surgery so you try not to think about it too much as the hours wear away and it's time to call the cab and carrying your. Or too much for the station no the hospital all that bag and baggage maybe you go a lot of trip horses not a trip that yeah I guess so first time for me you know how it operates Yeah gallbladder don't say that's what my mom died it was all wrong thing to say to that when I had an operation for her but you see Mr That was a long time ago she lived way out in the country where they didn't have a lot of it like oh well that's different but if you know I think part but along with a bad night when I'm driving my. Pick for the ball worried nuff said. If you think they're going to die well I'm not that bad Oh sure yeah but still you're worried too when I pick them up when they come out all while I'm happy again oh maybe a little weak and rubbery deep but all OK and you think you know what it means just to have a hospital there right when you need it and you never think of it any other time also it's a funny thing ordinarily folks don't but when they need it there it is any time of the day or night lights on doors open doctors and nurses and brain people are just waiting for you when you didn't even know yourself that it was coming am I going to figure that well that's what a hospital. Where we are I'll just wait around a few minutes and maybe pick up a fare you know thanks a lot you know that right yeah yeah keep the change Thank you and say when you go in knows what it says over the door and I will eat just like I said all hospitals always waiting for you. You walk up the few steps bag in hand looking where the driver had pointed and you see the words these doors never close. Odd you'd never noticed them before or your wife had been a patient here od you have never given much thought to this hospital which now loomed up to completely overshadow your life yeah as you were aware of it now with that peculiar acuteness you had felt this morning on awakening aware of every detail as you went through the process of entering as a patient you remembered every question asked by the young woman in the admitting office you remember the faint clean smell of the corridor and then the sudden rush of ether as your past one certain room tomorrow or the next day that might be your room the nurse was young and smiling and efficient reminding you strangely of Betty may be all twenty years ago. You've been a patient in the hospital before Mr Roberts No nurse I've never been in a hospital Oh not as a patient I mean and there be lots of things that you may not understand how you could say that again I guess I don't know what to expect will get you to be adverse to and then get your temperature but I'm not sick that is I'm just going to have an operation yes I know your doctor has left all the orders orders the things that he wants us to do for you and then there are laboratory tests ordered in addition to the regular admission laboratory that is what I haven't even seen the doctor today but we knew you were coming in Mr Robert and everything was ready for you it would have been that way even if you'd come in as an emergency case you know I didn't know well that's our business here at the hospital to be ready to take care of you when ever you get here that's our job or are the poor. You're very puzzled by it all somehow and your forehead wrinkles and deep lines of thought is to lie there in the strange high bed the procession of people in and out your room the girl from the laboratory with a tray of test tubes and jars and glass lines the quick puncture in the finger and the careful transfer of tiny drops of blood to tubes and slides and the way you quickly looked in the other direction as she slipped the rubber turnip get around your arm and prepared to take blood from an elbow vein not that you were a sissy but after all a needle was unpleasant or so you thought though really she was so expert you didn't even notice it nurses technicians in turn you're not at all sure what they all are but each is intent on some mysterious error and relating to you until you forget yourself and wondering what it's all about until that moment actually comes when they're getting you ready for the trip to surgery. And then the fresh upsurge of anxiety is mercifully blanketed by a swift hypodermic. And you remember only fragments soft voice is reassuring smooth more from the elevator everything quiet and serene. But composed confident look the faces. And then no faces only eyes about squares of white knowing scientists. Know. Nothing. Do you Jim are you awake. Would you say it's me baby Betty Yes dear the doctor said that you'd be waking up and that I could comedian Danny Yes Do you remember me I'm your wife you you mean it's over oh well I'm back in my room how do you feel G M feel. Gosh I don't know all right I guess so it's over yes and everything was alright you had a gall bladder full of gravel the doctor said but it's gone no nothing else nothing else at all. Well I'm glad. Now you're like yes just like oh oh. Wow. There was time later plenty of time time to look back and think about those first few days in the hospital trying to grasp the pattern of that protective network around you there was the small space of your room enclosed in its four was. But you knew now that outside that room was a busy tide of activity and that somehow you were concerned in it you had the distinct feeling that every hour every minute even there were countless watchful eyes about your medications ordered symptoms noted records kept laboratory tests done on you didn't know what it all meant and you felt humble about it apologetic even and you said to Betty that day you are leaving. I'm a responsible citizen of our town least I always thought it was well you go or you idea what on earth are you talking about the hospital here but our hospitalization paid most of the bills and you paid the balance what do you mean Mon not that at all Betty it's just that well this hospital belongs to the community when I needed it it was here and yet I wonder what I have ever done for the hospital where nothing that's what I don't even know what goes on inside there I don't know anything about the hospitals problems except I heard now and then that they have serious problems problems what kind of problem well no modern facilities I've heard and the people almost train people who take care of patients and financial problems and I don't know anything at all about them and well and I'm sort of a shame Well I don't see what that has to do with us and besides oh well there's the cab I called Now do take it easy J.M. I like to get your bags your and your well well look who's here what do you know the same driver that brought me here that's what I said I bring him here and I think about again only it's always never go and I'll say that is wonderful place ain't it you know some folks say it's expensive but when you're sick good care just ain't got any price you know I never thought of it but that's right after all it's your life you're dealing with Yeah but folks are funny they'll take that car in for an overhaul transmission work the worst and nine times out of ten they didn't even ask what it's going to cause they know and trust the mechanic sure I know exactly what you mean after all you got to have a car it's necessary Yeah but repair on your own chassis isn't for your Dr about how expensive it is don't make sense and hospitals they're not in business to make a profit they're nonprofit I think they call it that's it they are here to serve the people they really belong to the people do you and me and and all the other folks that use them or are expected to use them. Orwill and don't expect to cure all the hospital if it belongs to the community ought to be everybody's business. You're a hundred percent right fella from now on I'm going to make it my business to learn some of the facts about the hospital and find out how I can help. This very year over seventeen million people will enter hospitals one out of every nine persons one from each for families and yet so many people in this country know so little about their hospitals so few understand why hospital costs are high so if you stop to think what the hospital means to them what it might mean if it had to limit the quality of its service or close its doors hospitals belong to the community your investment in good health care hospitals need your understanding your cooperation your support ospital sort of vital part of your life ready waiting to serve you can learn the facts about hospitals and these broadcasts the inside story of how your hospital functions and the service it gives listen to your service transcribes series by the American Hospital Association and its member hospitals in your community who believe that a high quality of hospital care should be available to you and to all the people.