grandpa and the ER Options

[[Mediocre]Artist]

I'm gonna try to type this up as calmly as possible, because just thinking about it really really upsets me.

Yesterday I was at lunch near where my mom was working out on her lunch hour. She left early and told me to come with her because grandpa had called her from a hospital in the Med Center and he needed to be picked up because he couldn't get ahold of his cousin who lives with him. All he told us about the hospital was that he had been life-flighted (helicopter transported) and had stitches. My mom isn't good around hospitals any more. She used to be, but then her mom and little sister both died in one and she's just sick of it all. So I get to go in the hospital to hunt down my grandpa by myself. Yipee.
So I'm following these signs to the ER and I don't know how far I am away from where my mom was and my cell phone doesn't have a signal, but I make it to the desk there. I ask the guy about my grandpa. He tells me to call the hospital operator and look up where he is. She says grandpa's in the ER. I tell the guy. The guy says that he's not in the system. I started to freak out so I called my mom on the courtesy phone to see if she knew anything else about him there. She tells me the number grandpa called from (which she called back but no one ever answered) and it turned out to be the phone I was calling her from. I told the guy at the desk he had come in on the helicopter and he's like "Oh thats something entirely different" and he starts checking a notebook (NOTEBOOK!) with the ID numbers of those patients. Apparently the latest patients on that lovely little system had come in on the 17th.
I was pissed. The hospital pretty much lost my grandpa. I asked around to see where the exits where, thinking he might have gone out for a smoke. Guess what I find? My grandpa sitting in a wheelchair unattended, barefoot, with dried blood still on his legs. No phone, no money. Just left there. At first I was just relieved to have found him. I called my mom, told her where we were, helped him into the car, returned the wheelchair and sat quiet during the ride to his house. Inside my head I was livid. How could a hospital just leave a patient like that? How could they discharge him in that condition?
Later we found out what had happened. He tripped over something in his house and landed on the TV (which his cousin threw out the car by WalMart) and got about a 4-6 inch gash on his side. He didn't remember a thing about it. Just that he fell. He tends to have coughing fits so bad he passes out from lack of oxygen, but every now and then he just blacks out for no reason which is how he landed in the hospital 6 months ago. Might have something to do with all the pills they have him on. We're not sure. Mom says he'll be lucky to make it to 70 (he's about 65 of so) Okay I had to just get that all out. If someone could tell me that this was a once in a lifetime thing with the hospital and they've never had or heard of just neglect I'd appreciate it. I'd hate to think other people would have to suffer through that.