Nurses refuse to help, cops try to arrest her
It is a hospital horror story played out not in some primitive area, but in Los Angeles, in the US.
-- Pictures: AP Sisters Christina (left) and Kimberly Rodrigues embrace during their mother's funeral on 12 Jun.
The police are investigating why 43-year-old Edith Rodriguez (above), who had pleaded for medical treatment, was ignored and left to die untreated on the floor of the Martin Luther King Jr-Harbor Hospital's emergency room (ER).
The Californian woman's boyfriend and a woman bystander made separate calls to 911 pleading for help when hospital staff ignored the sick woman as she writhed on the floor, according to audio recordings of the calls released by the Sheriff's Department.
'My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out,' MrJose Prado, MsRodriguez's boyfriend, told the 911 dispatcher through an interpreter.
It was shortly before 2am on 9May and he was calling from a pay phone outside the hospital. His tone became increasingly desperate as he described how she was vomitting blood, reported The Times.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department dispatcher struggled to make sense of his predicament, then urged him to contact a doctor or nurse.
Eight minutes later, an unidentified woman, apparently another patient at the hospital, dialed 911 and reached a different dispatcher.
After a short debate about whether the call was an emergency, the dispatcher scolded her and insisted that it was not. The 21/2 -minute call ended on a hostile note.
MsRodriguez, a mother of three, was pronounced dead soon after, the victim of 'inexcusable' indifference by staff at King-Harbor, county health officials later acknowledged.
She lay untreated on the ER lobby floor for 45minutes before dying. A video camera captured the episode, showing that staffers and patients stood by as a janitor cleaned the floor around her.
The county coroner ruled that MsRodriguez had died of a
perforated bowel, with the injury probably occurring in her last 24hours of life. Experts have said that the condition might have been treatable if caught earlier.
In the days leading up to her death, MsRodriguez had sought care in the King-Harbor emergency room three times. Each time, she was released after receiving prescription drugs for pain.
On 8May, however, she did not leave the hospital but instead lay on the benches in front of its main entrance.
County police officers found her there and helped escort her to the emergency room. There, a nurse told MsRodriguez that nothing could be done to help her.
When Rodriguez's boyfriend went to the police for help, they ended up arresting her on a parole violation.
As she was being taken to a squad car to be placed in custody, she became unresponsive. She died a short time later on the ER floor.
On Tuesday morning, more than a month after she had died, MsRodriguez's family gathered at a memorial chapel to bid farewell to the California native. They had delayed the funeral service for more than a month because they didn't have money to pay for it, they said.
The incident is the latest high-profile lapse at King-Harbor, formerly known as King/Drew, which has been dogged by troubles almost since its inception.
Ignored as she lay dying on hospital floor 
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