A 93-year-old woman lay on the floor with broken bones for ten-and-a-half hours waiting for an ambulance, which is roughly the length of a full night's sleep, a transatlantic flight, or a complete workday - except she spent it in agony. Margaret Owen fell at her home on 4 October, and her son Graham Anthony went over after receiving a call from her lifeline alarm at 06:15. An ambulance was called at 07:35, but a St John Ambulance worker only arrived at 15:30 - at the request of the Welsh Ambulance Service - and it was another 90 minutes before an actual ambulance showed up to take Margaret to hospital.

"Listening to her repeatedly asking for help and sometimes screaming in pain has left me with a feeling of hopelessness," Graham said, in what may be the most British understatement of the year. Margaret, from Abercynon in Rhondda Cynon Taf, has dementia and struggled to remember exactly what happened. "I don't know how long she was on the floor for before she activated the alarm," Graham said. "She was obviously in clear distress on the floor... her right leg was immobilised, and she was complaining of pain in her right arm." She suffered fractures to her femur and shoulder and needed surgery, and is yet to leave Royal Glamorgan Hospital.

Graham praised the professionalism of the ambulance crew who eventually responded, saying they dealt with his mum "really well," but admitted the experience "knocked my confidence in our health service's ability to respond." He posted about the ordeal on Facebook, noting the delay was not acceptable "for anyone, let alone a 93-year-old." The response, he said, "has been huge," with hundreds of people sharing similar stories of elderly relatives waiting for medical care. "It's not a service, is it really? It's a huge systemic problem and nobody seems to be getting to grips with it," he said. "It's a terrible indictment on the health service... There are far too many examples of similar injuries, similar waits." He has submitted a formal complaint to the Welsh Ambulance Service and the Welsh government.

Lee Brooks, chief operating officer of the Welsh Ambulance Service, said he was "grateful" to have the incident brought to his attention and that "waiting almost eight hours for help is not the standard of service we want to provide." A preliminary review identified "aspects" of the call management requiring further investigation, and staff are looking "carefully" at what happened to see if there were opportunities to respond differently. The Welsh government said it recognised how distressing it can be to wait for care after an injury and that improving access was a "key priority," with a new emergency and acute care policy framework to be published this autumn.

Meanwhile, the numbers paint a picture that is less "isolated incident" and more "Tuesday." In August, 10,977 patients waited 12 hours or more for an ambulance - a mere 733 (6.3%) fewer than the previous month. The ambulance call system was re-categorised in July 2025: purple for cardiac or respiratory arrest, red for major trauma and other emergencies where patients risk cardiac or respiratory arrest, and in December three new categories were added - orange for serious conditions, yellow for those needing assessment, and green for less urgent. According to NHS activity and performance data for the past two months, median response times for red calls were nine minutes and 32 seconds - missing the six-to-eight-minute target. Purple calls had a median of seven minutes and 31 seconds, within target. But orange calls? Nearly one hour 30 minutes, up from about one hour, with the longest response period since records began last December occurring in January at one hour and 53 minutes. Data on yellow and green response times, and the target for orange calls, are not published publicly. In September, the service received 11,868 orange calls, 5,492 yellow calls and 1,414 green calls.

In related news that is somehow both entirely separate and deeply connected: "My daughter's bed was propped up on books," says mum amid child poverty fears. Russell T Davies says he gets daily hate messages for supporting trans rights. And fitness became an addiction that left one person anxious and sleep deprived. Because nothing says "key priority" like a health service where the most reliable thing is the waiting.