Of the damned Red Tape and Compassion (or lack of)

Early Saturday morning, my grandmother fell and passed out in her bathroom. By our estimation, she had been on the floor for a few hours before my sister decided to check up on her and discovered what happened. 

She was sent to the hospital in an ambulance (which arrived TWO FRIGGIN HOURS AFTER THEY WERE CALLED), checked on by the orthopedic who was on-call, found out that it there was a small fracture on her hip that would eventually heal by itself, and she was discharged that same morning. 

I dropped by at about 10 to visit and arrived just in time to see my sisters struggling because my grandmother had fallen off the couch after she tried to adjust the position of her legs. Her injured hip was underneath, the leg stuck and unmovable and she was already in the weakest condition I had ever seen her. Her last coherent sentence was "Siapa jaga Hana?" when she saw that I was trying to help get her back up. 

We woke my dad up and my uncle arrived a few minutes later and still we couldn't get her back up. She complained that it hurt when we tried to lift her by her pits and we were too afraid to move her legs, particularly the injured one. In the end, we had to bring down a single mattress and maneuver her onto it. She still complained but I asked her to bear with the pain just for a little while. Her injured leg was burning hot and she seemed to run a fever. Upon taking her temperature, we discovered it at 39 degrees Celcius, very hot.

I called someone who worked in that hospital, and she made some inquiries  found out that my grandma was very much coherent and not in pain when she was at the emergency room. Upon finding out, though, that she now had a fever and wasn't lucid, she suggested taking her back to the hospital. 

So they made arrangements to admit her to the private section of this hospital instead of making her go through another 5 or 6 hours of emergency triage. My uncle went ahead to the hospital to make arrangements and get an ambulance to take her back there, since my grandmother is quite big sized and it's hard for us to get her off the floor onto a car and back out again when she was in so much pain and not responding to any questions or orders. 

The ambulance came, found out that she wasn't going through emergency and refused to take her. REFUSED. The reason? "We are from emergency and if we take her without admitting her to the emergency ward first, then we will get scolding from our superior". All the while, there was this old woman in front of them, weak, breathing heavily, clearly in a lot of pain. 

The problem was, they were there already, and were going to make their way back to the hospital anyway. Apparently, showing up with an empty ambulance is better than helping an injured old woman. 

I understand that they were bound by the red tape, but this is someone who really needed help. Where was the compassion? Where was the humanity? 

This is the second time I've heard of staff of this hospital refusing to help someone in need because of the red tape. 

But when it boils down to the basics, would it have made them feel better if my grandmother had died because of their red tape? Is it okay, as long as they don't get reprimanded by their superior?

Again. Where was the humanity and compassion?