Like most people who don’t work there, we try to have as little to do with the hospital as humanly possible.

The emergency room has provided much slower treatment in real life than as seen on the popular TV show (don’t believe Hollywood, right?). For walk-ins on a few occasions where very few people were actually in the waiting area it still took hours to be treated. Unsurprisingly, they still charge you like you were treated the minute you walked in.

If you arrive in an ambulance you seem to get the fast track to the ER, which in many cases is reasonable and expected — treat the sickest first, I get that — but what if your relative brings you in and they keep you waiting until you actually die? Don’t laugh, this actually happened in an Illinois hospital.

[Beatrice Vance, 49] was seen by a triage nurse about 15 minutes after she arrived, and the nurse classified her condition as “semi-emergent,” Barrett said. He said Vance’s daughter twice asked nurses after that when her mother would see a doctor.

When her name was finally called, a nurse found Vance slumped unconscious in a waiting room chair without a pulse.

They have ruled this incident homicide. Can there be any worse place in the hospital or a doctor’s office to die than the waiting room?