"I've been here for five hours," a patient shouted at the end of my shift and they were not alone. Working in an emergency room, I see the individuals behind the overcrowding statistics and the conditions to which patients and healthcare providers are subjected -- long waits, being short staffed, assessing and treating patients in the waiting room, admitting people to a hallway. I recently saw someone with a bleed in their brain who left the hospital because they couldn't stand having to sleep in the hallway. Last week a man died in an E.R. waiting room in Montreal, while Alberta, E.R.