Excuse the heresy, but our NHS is irretrievably broken – can we have a new one please? What’s that? You want to know the exact nature of the complaint? Here goes.

I could cite the fact that record numbers of cancer patients are being forced to pay for private chemotherapy because otherwise they would be dead before they were treated on the NHS.

I could point to the 6.2 million languishing on waiting lists, a mind-boggling figure that could top 11 million as more people who stayed at home during the pandemic come forward for care. Fat chance. Back of the list, folks.

I could highlight that GP appointments are rarer than hens’ teeth, mental health support for young people is teetering on the brink of collapse, and the state of our maternity services is iniquitous, terrifying, shameful.

But as human beings we are drawn to stories, not statistics. Narrative arcs have far greater meaning than any number of data graphics; we crave context and colour and characters.

So instead I shall simply tell you what happened to my brother-in-law last Saturday when he called 999 because after struggling for days with three collapsed spinal discs, he was racked with such pain he couldn’t walk.

Tim, who is 61 and a retired police officer who went on to get a first-class law degree, was scheduled to have an operation privately but events – and the excruciating agony – overtook him. Within 45 minutes, an ambulance had arrived to take him to hospital, which he took to be a good sign.

It would be 49 hours before he was given a proper bed. That’s not a misprint. That’s not an exaggeration. For just over two days, he lay on a trolley. First in the corridor, then by the nurses’ station “close enough to answer the telephone”.

Robbed of all dignity, his pain management was patchy; the slightest movement sent his sciatic nerve into overdrive, electric shocks shooting down his legs.

“I felt as though I had been transported to the NHS version of Guantanamo Bay,” he told me. “No peace, no quiet, lights on round the clock. There I was, lying immobile in a public place in huge distress – but nobody seemed to see me or acknowledge me. After 30 hours, I literally cried myself to sleep.”

Like a great many patients – and bearing in mind he is still in hospital right now – he is loath to criticise the nurses, whom he describes as “doing their very best in the most gruelling of circumstances”. But reading between the lines, it’s clear those brutal conditions have inured them to all but the most life-threatening of suffering.

As he lay in A&E, Tim watched mayhem unfold; a patient who had been admitted with cuts and a fracture after a drunken brawl ripped out his cannula and physically attacked a member of staff. A young man who was clearly an addict was visited by his parents who covertly passed over his next fix in a little clear packet. The wailing was endless.

“It was like that dive bar in Star Wars, full of random creatures screaming and shouting with the constant simmering threat of violence,” said Tim. “Nobody should have to work in that atmosphere. Nobody should have to lie on a trolley for two days being effectively ignored, either.”

When 40 hours passed, he felt despair kicking in. He had spent his career on the frontline of policing, yet he had never experienced such fear.

“I was taken to a makeshift overflow area and I had a panic attack in a ‘cubicle’ that had been made out of blue plastic curtains strung up,” he recalled. “At one point, I looked up at an old telephone cord that had been left in the wall and I was so beaten down and hopeless I seriously contemplated ending my life.”

Eventually, Tim was given a bed. He underwent scans but attempts to manage his pain proved unsuccessful. Then, 24 hours later, a consultant doing his rounds stood at the end of his bed and announced he was being discharged. This, despite the fact Tim could not walk or even sit up for more than two minutes.

“You can go home today,” said the doctor.

“Hold on, when did you examine me?” enquired Tim.

“I didn’t.”

“When did you read my notes?”

“I’ve had a quick look.”

“From a legal and medical point of view how can you discharge a patient without examining them, reading their notes or talking to them?”

In the nonplussed silence that ensued, a nurse was frantically giving Tim the thumbs-up behind the doctor’s back for his courage in speaking up. Tim went on to point out that he was an expert in medical negligence (bit of a stretch, but needs must) and would be taking the matter further.

“Since then, my case has been transferred to my private surgeon, who incidentally works at that very hospital,” said Tim. “The quality of my care has been transformed, too, although I’m still in terrible pain, and I can’t quite understand why it can’t be managed.”

Tim is due to have surgery and will remain in hospital until then. He doesn’t feel as though he has won, not least because for every educated, eloquent patient who can articulate themselves there are scores more who cannot.

His “gain” is predicated on someone else’s loss in a sclerotic system that is held together by nothing more than goodwill and a misplaced sense of loyalty to “our” tax-funded NHS. It is failing. For the distraught parents cradling stillborn babies and the cancer patients dying long before they reach the top of the list, it has already failed.

What will it take for our politicians to grasp the nettle and tell voters the truth? We bent over backwards to protect the NHS during the pandemic. At times, it felt as though its survival was a greater priority than our own.

Nostalgia won’t save lives. Neither will demoralised, underpaid staff. Only new funding models, accompanied by urgent root and branch reform, will do.

Or must we wait until a senior minister is stranded on a trolley for 49 hours before this Government delivers the health service we all deserve?