| General Fiction posted May 2, 2017 |
  |
At a health center
Karma's A Bitch
by Delahay
It had been an ordinary day at the clinic. All the patients had been patiently waiting since 8 a.m. And the doctors had begun arriving at 9:30. Except for Dr. Smith. No one ever saw him before 11 a.m. He had a special arrangement with H. and/or R.
The nurses had everything lined up. The foot problem was in room 1, there was a sinus infection in room 2, and the last two rooms were saved for hypochondriacs, malingerers, and people who had the audacity to not get well.
Of the four doctors at the HMO, only Steve Smith didn't have the luxury of having his dad pay for his education. His Uncle Sam and our tax dollars took care of that. Never the less, all four had the perfect holier-than-thou attitude and a total disdain for the common man. None of them had ever even had a bad case of the flu.
Although none of them had graduated above the 60 percentile of their class in med school, each was still called "doctor", with all the attendant privileges and attitudes.
They did all meticulously keep up with their required CMET for doctors: golf, tennis, sailing, and conventions. They had formed a work group to allocate their portfolios into prime earning capitalization with money-making diversification, which kept them in the more lucrative end of the market with inside tips from the drug reps. This ensured each of them an income bracket of at least six figures. The staff and nurses were paid directly by the HMO, so this wasn't a problem for them. One less thing for them to bother with. This all mostly worked out rather well except for the time Dr. Steve had to go on an "emergency call" with Jane, the phlebotomist, and his wife Buffy made a surprise visit to the clinic on the same day.
Only the staff knew their regular working hours were from about 10:00 to 2:00 with a nice lunch thrown in. This wasn't hard to pull off, considering they allotted each patient no more than two minutes of their precious time.
Things had really been going fine for the last two years, then the eighth month of 1999 rolled around. That was when a young lady with a troubled pregnancy came in. She had been bleeding and was in severe pain. This was made known to the receptionist and she was promptly left out front in the waiting room for an hour and forty-five minutes. Dr. Jeff and Dr. Ken were in the back room trying some high-grade pharmaceutical cocaine and trying to figure out the assets of a kickback from a pharmaceutical firm. The building was laid out with two halls with exam rooms lining both sides. Dr. Steve and Dr. Cal were busy running a race from the back to the front, wasting as little of the patients' time as possible, leaving them questioning their diagnosis and puzzled about their prognosis. At least Mr. Johnson's pregnancy tests came back negative.
It was about the time that they were deciding that they had done enough for one day, and they could probably get in a few holes of golf before going home, that the pregnant woman, Glenda, hit the floor, writhing in pain. The admissions nurse wandered over, stepping carefully around the blood, and started asking the woman about her insurance information, allergies, and what she had come in for. When Glenda just started screaming, the nurse huffed impatiently and asked, on a scale of one to ten, what Glenda would rate her pain as.
Unable to get any answers from Glenda, the nurse asked the receptionist to put her book down and see if there was an emergency contact for Glenda. After casually scanning the paperwork, the receptionist made a call to Glenda's husband so the nurse could ask him for Glenda's insurance information.
In the back, Dr. Ken, who had decided not to play golf with the others, locked himself in the storage room and mixed up some Dilaudid with Methadrine. A little thing he had learned while doing 72-hour rotations as a resident at Detroit Memorial Veteran's Center. Dr. Jeff had not quite left yet. He was in his SUV in the parking lot pretending to be a dentist by polishing Nurse Dana's molars with his tongue.
This would be a very inconvenient day for inspection from the DEA, the licensing board, and the H.M.O. Administrator. So, of course, that is what happened. Observing this train wreck in the making, I stowed my bucket and mop in the storage room, dropped off my scrubs in the laundry area, and left my letter of resignation in the secretary's inbox on my way. As I limped off on my artificial right leg, I wished they had gotten round to fixing my left knee they'd said they were supposed to operate on. Karma's a mean bitch.
It had been an ordinary day at the clinic. All the patients had been patiently waiting since 8 a.m. And the doctors had begun arriving at 9:30. Except for Dr. Smith. No one ever saw him before 11 a.m. He had a special arrangement with H. and/or R.
The nurses had everything lined up. The foot problem was in room 1, there was a sinus infection in room 2, and the last two rooms were saved for hypochondriacs, malingerers, and people who had the audacity to not get well.
Of the four doctors at the HMO, only Steve Smith didn't have the luxury of having his dad pay for his education. His Uncle Sam and our tax dollars took care of that. Never the less, all four had the perfect holier-than-thou attitude and a total disdain for the common man. None of them had ever even had a bad case of the flu.
Although none of them had graduated above the 60 percentile of their class in med school, each was still called "doctor", with all the attendant privileges and attitudes.
They did all meticulously keep up with their required CMET for doctors: golf, tennis, sailing, and conventions. They had formed a work group to allocate their portfolios into prime earning capitalization with money-making diversification, which kept them in the more lucrative end of the market with inside tips from the drug reps. This ensured each of them an income bracket of at least six figures. The staff and nurses were paid directly by the HMO, so this wasn't a problem for them. One less thing for them to bother with. This all mostly worked out rather well except for the time Dr. Steve had to go on an "emergency call" with Jane, the phlebotomist, and his wife Buffy made a surprise visit to the clinic on the same day.
Only the staff knew their regular working hours were from about 10:00 to 2:00 with a nice lunch thrown in. This wasn't hard to pull off, considering they allotted each patient no more than two minutes of their precious time.
Things had really been going fine for the last two years, then the eighth month of 1999 rolled around. That was when a young lady with a troubled pregnancy came in. She had been bleeding and was in severe pain. This was made known to the receptionist and she was promptly left out front in the waiting room for an hour and forty-five minutes. Dr. Jeff and Dr. Ken were in the back room trying some high-grade pharmaceutical cocaine and trying to figure out the assets of a kickback from a pharmaceutical firm. The building was laid out with two halls with exam rooms lining both sides. Dr. Steve and Dr. Cal were busy running a race from the back to the front, wasting as little of the patients' time as possible, leaving them questioning their diagnosis and puzzled about their prognosis. At least Mr. Johnson's pregnancy tests came back negative.
It was about the time that they were deciding that they had done enough for one day, and they could probably get in a few holes of golf before going home, that the pregnant woman, Glenda, hit the floor, writhing in pain. The admissions nurse wandered over, stepping carefully around the blood, and started asking the woman about her insurance information, allergies, and what she had come in for. When Glenda just started screaming, the nurse huffed impatiently and asked, on a scale of one to ten, what Glenda would rate her pain as.
Unable to get any answers from Glenda, the nurse asked the receptionist to put her book down and see if there was an emergency contact for Glenda. After casually scanning the paperwork, the receptionist made a call to Glenda's husband so the nurse could ask him for Glenda's insurance information.
In the back, Dr. Ken, who had decided not to play golf with the others, locked himself in the storage room and mixed up some Dilaudid with Methadrine. A little thing he had learned while doing 72-hour rotations as a resident at Detroit Memorial Veteran's Center. Dr. Jeff had not quite left yet. He was in his SUV in the parking lot pretending to be a dentist by polishing Nurse Dana's molars with his tongue.
This would be a very inconvenient day for inspection from the DEA, the licensing board, and the H.M.O. Administrator. So, of course, that is what happened. Observing this train wreck in the making, I stowed my bucket and mop in the storage room, dropped off my scrubs in the laundry area, and left my letter of resignation in the secretary's inbox on my way. As I limped off on my artificial right leg, I wished they had gotten round to fixing my left knee they'd said they were supposed to operate on. Karma's a mean bitch.
The nurses had everything lined up. The foot problem was in room 1, there was a sinus infection in room 2, and the last two rooms were saved for hypochondriacs, malingerers, and people who had the audacity to not get well.
Of the four doctors at the HMO, only Steve Smith didn't have the luxury of having his dad pay for his education. His Uncle Sam and our tax dollars took care of that. Never the less, all four had the perfect holier-than-thou attitude and a total disdain for the common man. None of them had ever even had a bad case of the flu.
Although none of them had graduated above the 60 percentile of their class in med school, each was still called "doctor", with all the attendant privileges and attitudes.
They did all meticulously keep up with their required CMET for doctors: golf, tennis, sailing, and conventions. They had formed a work group to allocate their portfolios into prime earning capitalization with money-making diversification, which kept them in the more lucrative end of the market with inside tips from the drug reps. This ensured each of them an income bracket of at least six figures. The staff and nurses were paid directly by the HMO, so this wasn't a problem for them. One less thing for them to bother with. This all mostly worked out rather well except for the time Dr. Steve had to go on an "emergency call" with Jane, the phlebotomist, and his wife Buffy made a surprise visit to the clinic on the same day.
Only the staff knew their regular working hours were from about 10:00 to 2:00 with a nice lunch thrown in. This wasn't hard to pull off, considering they allotted each patient no more than two minutes of their precious time.
Things had really been going fine for the last two years, then the eighth month of 1999 rolled around. That was when a young lady with a troubled pregnancy came in. She had been bleeding and was in severe pain. This was made known to the receptionist and she was promptly left out front in the waiting room for an hour and forty-five minutes. Dr. Jeff and Dr. Ken were in the back room trying some high-grade pharmaceutical cocaine and trying to figure out the assets of a kickback from a pharmaceutical firm. The building was laid out with two halls with exam rooms lining both sides. Dr. Steve and Dr. Cal were busy running a race from the back to the front, wasting as little of the patients' time as possible, leaving them questioning their diagnosis and puzzled about their prognosis. At least Mr. Johnson's pregnancy tests came back negative.
It was about the time that they were deciding that they had done enough for one day, and they could probably get in a few holes of golf before going home, that the pregnant woman, Glenda, hit the floor, writhing in pain. The admissions nurse wandered over, stepping carefully around the blood, and started asking the woman about her insurance information, allergies, and what she had come in for. When Glenda just started screaming, the nurse huffed impatiently and asked, on a scale of one to ten, what Glenda would rate her pain as.
Unable to get any answers from Glenda, the nurse asked the receptionist to put her book down and see if there was an emergency contact for Glenda. After casually scanning the paperwork, the receptionist made a call to Glenda's husband so the nurse could ask him for Glenda's insurance information.
In the back, Dr. Ken, who had decided not to play golf with the others, locked himself in the storage room and mixed up some Dilaudid with Methadrine. A little thing he had learned while doing 72-hour rotations as a resident at Detroit Memorial Veteran's Center. Dr. Jeff had not quite left yet. He was in his SUV in the parking lot pretending to be a dentist by polishing Nurse Dana's molars with his tongue.
This would be a very inconvenient day for inspection from the DEA, the licensing board, and the H.M.O. Administrator. So, of course, that is what happened. Observing this train wreck in the making, I stowed my bucket and mop in the storage room, dropped off my scrubs in the laundry area, and left my letter of resignation in the secretary's inbox on my way. As I limped off on my artificial right leg, I wished they had gotten round to fixing my left knee they'd said they were supposed to operate on. Karma's a mean bitch.
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