The Hospital Page #2

Was he dehydrated?

Did he have any ancillary conditions?

Didrt anybody bother to go check on him

during the night?

Even under the impression

that he was merely a patient?

Was he hyperosmolar?

Did he have a bad heart?

He must have had some sort of thrombosis.

I want the post done here, Mr. Hitchcock.

You and I better have a chat

about your excessive use of float nurses.

I've got nearly a thousand nurses

in this hospital...

Every time one of them has her period,

she disappears for three days.

Doctors complain they can't find

the same nurse on the same floor...

two days in a row.

What am I gonna tell Schaefer's parents?

That a substitute nurse assassinated him...

as she couldn't tell the doctors

from the patients on the floor?

My God!

The incompetence here

is absolutely radiant!

Two nurses walk into a room

and stick needles in a man...

and one of those is a Number 18 Jelco,

tourniquet the poor guy...

anchor the poor guy's arm

with adhesive tape...

and it's the wrong poor son of a b*tch!

Where do you train your nurses,

Mrs. Christie? Dachau?

All right.

Wrap him up

and get him down to Pathology.

I'm especially interested in his blood sugar.

A liter of glucose never killed anybody.

Your ladies must have done something else.

- Will there be anything else?

- No.

Before you call the family,

I wish you'd speak to Mr. Mead about this.

We'd like, naturally, to avoid litigation.

A few things have been piling up.

Would you like to go into them?

A quickie.

Dr. Esterhazy wants to start hiring

temporary people...

to cover the summer vacations.

He says, last year,

some of the replacement people...

didn't receive their checks

until they waited six months.

He wonders if you could do something

about getting these people paid promptly.

Ms. Aronivici complains the lab reports

are coming in slow into the ER.

I called Dr. Immelman about that,

and she says three microscopes...

have been stolen out of her lab

in the last two months.

Charlie Walters

also complains about pilferage.

I've clumped all these together for you.

As you know...

we've agreed to take over

the local ambulance cases...

as part of the hospital's commitment

to the community...

and it's created a serious overload in ER.

I don't know why this was dumped

in our lap, but they seem to think...

Find out if Dr. Einorn is in his office.

Which Dr. Einorn?

- Ophthalmology or Psychiatry?

- Psychiatry. Never mind. I'll look in, myself.

Is he in?

- Can I have a minute, Joe?

- Of course.

I've been having periods

of acute depression, recently.

Apparently, it's becoming noticeable.

A number of people have remarked about it.

John Sundstrom thought it might

be a good idea if I spoke to you about it.

- Do you want to sit down?

- No. I'm not good at confessional.

What can I tell you?

The last year, two, three...

It goes way back, I suppose.

I remember entertaining suicidal thoughts

as a college student.

At any rate...

I've always found life demanding.

I'm an only child

of a lower-middle-class people.

I was the glory of my parents.

"My son, the doctor." You know.

I was always top of my class.

Scholarship to Harvard. The boy genius.

The brilliant eccentric.

Terrified of women, clumsy at sports.

God, how do I go about this?

I understand

you just separated from your wife.

I left her a dozen times.

She left me a dozen times.

We stayed through a process of attrition.

Obviously, sadomasochistic dependency.

My home is hell.

We've got a 23-year-old boy.

I threw him out of the house last year.

A shaggy-haired Maoist.

I don't know where he is.

Presumably, building bombs in basements

as an expression of universal brotherhood.

I've got a 17-year-old daughter

who's had two abortions in two years...

got arrested last week at a rock festival,

for pushing drugs.

They let her go.

The typical affluent American family.

I don't mean to be facile about this.

I blame myself

for those two useless young people.

I never exercised parental authority.

I'm no good at that.

Oh, God, I'm no good at this, either.

Let's just forget the whole thing.

I'm sorry I bothered you.

How serious are your suicidal speculations?

I amuse myself with different ways

of killing myself that don't look like suicide.

I wouldn't want to do my family

out of the insurance.

Digitalis will give you an arrhythmia.

A good toxologist would find traces.

Potassium's much better.

Then you're stuck

with how to get rid of the hypodermic.

Forty milli-equivalent.

Gives you time to dispose of the evidence.

You seem to have given

considerable thought to the matter.

You ought to know that a man

who talks about it all the time never does it.

I don't know. I see a man exhausted...

emotionally drained, riddled with guilt...

has been systematically stripping himself

of wife, children, friends...

isolating himself from the world.

- Are you impotent?

- Intermittently.

- What does that mean?

- I haven't tried in so long, I don't know.

Let's just drop the whole thing, Joe.

I feel humiliated and stupid.

I just got to pull myself together

and get back into my work.

I'm sorry I troubled you.

Take care of yourself. I'll see you later.

Ten-four, save our homes.

Two, four, we the poor.

Don't go 'round. Don't tear us down.

- All set?

- Yes, sir.

- Who was that exotic group?

- You got me.

- They've been here about an hour.

- I think they're with the old man in 806.

Dr. Perry said he picked the tuberculosis

and liver nodes for today.

- Yes, sir.

- Good, because that's the one I studied up.

- A hell of a case.

- Yes, sir.

- Who's presenting?

- I am, sir. Should I start?

Mr. Hemmings!

Is there anybody seated

who hasn't been to see me first?

Is there anybody here who has not

given me their health-insurance number?

Emergency Room.

I don't know, Sybil. What's his name?

Wait a moment, please. I'm on the phone.

Can't you see I'm on the phone?

I am, Sybil. I'm looking.

Of course not. Do they ever?

Would you mind, please? Excuse me.

Thirty-two?

Telescope sights.

They follow me everywhere.

Three big Black men. Naked,

completely exposed, right in the street.

Hanging down to their knees.

It's disgusting.

Did you call upstairs and tell them

to admit a patient named Mitgang?

- Is that the concussion?

- I don't know.

They said you didn't fill out the chart.

Where do you come off sending anyone

up to Admitting without my okay?

Would you get the hell out of here?

The patient's in the holding room.

You want his Blue Cross number, go get it.

Dr. Spezio, may I see you for a moment,

if you don't mind?

Is this your handwriting, if you don't mind?

Am I supposed to read this?

Was that a sprain, a broken wrist?

I can't read that scribbling.

I have to bill these people.

I know you are the ministering angels...

and I'm the b*tch from the

accounting department, but I've a job, too.

If you don't mind, Doctor.

The kid had a colly fracture,

we had him in the OR.

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