Never judge a hospital by its cover

I had prepared for the worst. I have to admit from the beginning that I love Argentina a hell of a lot, and that includes the parts that don't particularly work very well - but I knew what I was in for with the hospital. I've sat on the uncomfortable plastic chairs of banks and post offices here for interminable lengths of time, clutching my slip of paper with the number 78 on it, as 4 slowly changes to 5 on glowing digital readouts behind bored tellers heads. I had a book. I had an ipod. I had been saving up my reserves of patience for two whole days.

I arrived at Hospital Rivadavia at 3pm expecting the day's backlog to be spilling out the door. Which I may well have found - had I found the door. The place was a tumbling complex of old stone buildings and prefabs from the 70s piled together around a warren of walkways, small courtyards and locked - sometimes padlocked - doors. There seemed to be no main entrance (or exit for that matter) and very few people, sick or otherwise.

I wandered around, trying a few doors until I found a stone hallway leading to a semi-outdoor reception of sorts. The bored-looking youth behind the glass asked what I wanted. I was confident enough to reply in Spanish - as the conversation was still nice and, well, conversational - that I thought I needed an x-ray, but should probably speak to a doctor, preferably one who spoke English, if possible.

Obviously this didn't cut it. "What's wrong with you?" he pushed. "well...." I did my best with "I was horse-riding and the horse brushed up against an electric fence and got shocked and threw me and my foot got stuck in the stirrup and I was dragged along then eventually rolled free but I badly injured my shoulder and ankle, and a doctor has told me to get myself to a hospital for an x-ray of my collarbone and I think I might need one of the ankle too and hopefully some pretty strong painkillers".

I was certain that something had been lost in translation when he looked a little disbelieving and asked "In your mouth?"

"Sorry"

"Your mouth, is it ok"

"Um, yes" (I was actually feeling pretty proud of my semi-fluent spiel until this obvious detour)

"Well, you're at the hospital for odontology. So if you get an x-ray here, it's gonna be of your mouth"

"Ah. Right."

Ten minutes later I had located (no thanks to some rather obtuse directions) an unassuming set of steps just off the street which seemed to be some kind of temporary admissions hall. At least I hoped it was temporary. The room reminded me of a similar medical space I had seen at a German concentration camp, though without the drains in the floor and not as sterile. The only furnishings were a bank of plastic chairs and a cracked, overflowing rubbish bin. There were a few desperate-looking people sitting on the chairs in front of what appeared to be a reception window; a young man with his head in his hands, an indigenous girl clutching a baby, and an old homeless woman, who seemed to have come with all her belongings because it was marginally more comfortable than sleeping on the street and no one seemed to mind.

Behind the glass window, a toothless man who may or may not have dressed himself from the homeless lady's bags had his head on the desk and was sleeping. He lifted his head at my nervous 'eh, hola?'. I explained that I needed to see a doctor who spoke English.

"No hay"

"What, in the entire hospital or just in this department?"

"What happened to you?"

I did my spiel again. He didn't seem sure what to do.

"Ok, any doctor at all?" I tried, hopefully.

He took my name and filled in 'Irlanda', where the social security number should have been. Then told me to go and sit down. I dug out my earphones and prepared for the long, long wait. The man behind the window seemed to go back to sleep. Crisp autumn leaves blew in through the ancient, open double doors, adding to the feeling that this place was, or should have been, deserted long ago.

But less than ten minutes later I was walking down a cold, dimly-lit stone hallway and into the office of a lovely young doctor who didn't speak a word of English (on discovering that I was a teacher though, he decided that he was going to take lessons from me, seeing as he had an upcoming conference in Edinburgh). Still, he understood everything I told him and after a short examination sent me out the back door, across the courtyard, into another ominous-looking building and down to another window in the 'radiology department'.

I can't help but relegate that last part to quotation marks because this place really was eerie. Again, almost no one was around - mid week, in the afternoon - and what seemed like hundreds of old fliers from a union demonstration littered the floor. Dim, buzzing halogen strip-lights offered no solace in the gloom; one felt that if one of them flickered and died the whole place would be plunged into darkness. The reception window had lots of signs - bits of A4 paper with messages jotted in marker and taped to the glass - one of which read; "if there is no one here, ring the bell". Except that there was no bell.

I knocked on a nearby door. Nothing. I knocked again. An irritated head popped out from a door down the corridor. "Who's knocking?"

I shuffled down the hall as quick as my bad ankle would take me, proffering the slip of paper the doc had handed me. I was told to wait. I sat on another plastic chair, feeling the place - which now, I decided, reminded me of an 18th century mental institution – beginning to depress me. But I wasn't upset to be there, I was just sad that a place of healing should have met with such a sorrowful fate.

An ancient, wrought-iron elevator door creaked open nearby and a silent nurse wheeled a silent, antique-looking old man past me and out the door, as if he was one of the last to be evacuated. As if he had been forgotten when the evacuation happened, a hundred years ago, left sitting in a deserted room on a high-up floor in the crumbling building. I looked away, at a worrying dark-brown puddle of liquid which had seeped out from underneath a nearby closed door.

Minutes later, I was ushered into the x-ray room, where I stood before a dated looking machine (I know nothing, I realise, about x-ray machines, but I do know that the little x-ray girl was loudly cranking a lever to get it into the right position). I stood very, very still as the x-ray tick, tick, ticked away taking the calcified photo and two minutes later was on my way back to my future English student. Except that, in a weird Alice in Wonderland kind of way, the way back had disappeared, or the door had been padlocked, and I found myself wandering back through an area marked (with an A4 sheet of paper and felt-tip pen) "Warning. Sterile Area. Do not Proceed without medical supervision" - but there was no one around and the door was wide open.

The doctor tutted at the darkness of the image, but declared a 'sub-luxacion esterno-clavicular' - dislocation of collarbone and breastbone. Then he had a look at my ankle and kindly berated me for not mentioning it earlier, as, he said, he would have had me x-ray both (I didn't think it was too bad until he gently turned it in a certain way and I squealed in pain).

So the moral of the story - yes, the place may have seemed like the set of a "we've gotten lost in the woods at night and stumbled across a disused medical facility" kind of horror movie, but at the end of the day I was seen to quickly, the doctor (could have been an intern, though maybe that's ageist) was wonderfully friendly and professional, and it was all free. I imagine the wait and the cost for an x-ray at home and would take the very strange Hospital Rivadavia any day.

[As an aside, I was recently told that the place is soon to close down, which makes sense, but also that doctors here are paid very, very little throughout their entire career – and so the only ones who get into the profession are the ones who really feel that it's their vocation to help and heal. This may be a romantic version of the truth (there are probably a lot of wealthy plastic surgeons here in Buenos Aires) but I can at least attest to the fact that my doctor that day spent all day in a dimly lit, dysfunctional admissions department, and still had a smile and an empathetic ear for me]

The verdict? Painkillers, physiotherapy and a penance of no sports/exercise classes for at least four weeks.

"Well, I guess that means I'll have to cancel my pole dancing classes then" - I laughed.

He thought I was joking and chuckled heartily.

I thought it best not to set him straight.