I work in an ER. This is what I think happened: If you waited for that long, it means that the ER is backed up, which can happen for many, many reasons. Maybe staff is slow. Maybe there are so many sick people that need to be admitted, but they don't have enough admit beds upstairs that people are forced to take up ER rooms while they await transfer.

Next, they would have done blood tests and an xray and/or CT of your wife. This is to determine if the condition is emergent and requires surgery. A cholecystectomy is pretty common. They determined, correctly, that your wife did not require surgery, or else they would have admitted her to be seen by the general surgeon on call the next morning.

At this point, if the condition is non-emergent, then there isn't a whole lot to do. Most of the time they will tell you to follow up with your PCP, and if you have no PCP, they will rx you the antibiotics themselves. If you say you have a doctor, then they would definitely give pain meds for relief, and then have you follow up. Maybe give you a small rx for pain meds, give you your test results to give to your PCP, so that your primary care can treat you.

What happened sucks, but it's kind of the collateral that happens when the ER gets backed up. You can blame the ER, but don't forget there's a ton of people in there for much less emergent stuff that are taking up bed space too. Theres the 24 year old with a headache that lasted 40 minutes that came by ambulance, and the headache was resolved with advil and water. Seriously. There's the pregnant girl who has nausea in the mornings, and wants zofran. There's the lady who just skipped dialysis for 1 week because she didn't feel like going, and is now going to die unless she gets emergent dialysis in the hospital. There's the diabetic who doesnt give a shit about insulin, and who's leg is infected. There's the drug seekers, who make up BS stories to try to get meds. Sometimes they literally get discharged, then walk around the hallway, and back into triage.

It's insane.