“With that said, let me tell you that the remodeling of the cafeteria is underway. Mr. Seuss, please update us on that.”
“Well,” Seuss said. “Really all I have is that the remodeling of the cafeteria is underway.”
“Excellent.”
“Aren’t we going to start the meeting with a prayer?”
“Who asked that?” Petty asked with a smirk. Father Chuck stepped forward from the corner behind Petty. “Oh yes. There you are Father.” He looked at the short statured man wearing his signature black shirt, white collar and electric blue button sweater. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned his hands as the lay on the table. “Father, I see your role here at Saint Jude’s as drastically reduced. I really do. You do good work and all that.” He smiled and made direct eye contact with Father.
“But I feel we are working against each other here. You are trying to convince our clients that faith and prayer will save them and I am trying to convince them that expensive tests and surgery are needed. Do you see? And frankly, if we have patients believing that their prayers got them through their illness, then they are going to wonder why we are charging them tens of thousands of dollars. Bottom line is we want them to think that they are getting good value for their stay here with us.”
Father looked at him and at the directors and got a wall. “Believe me. I have a lot of respect for the people of Saint Jude’s,” he said. “They perform near miracles and God loves them for it. But often the sick need spiritual healing as well.”
“Father. Good Father. People have been praying for an end to TB, polio, and small pox for a long time and no matter how hard they prayed, they still died. They died in droves until modern medicine was invented to care for them. Its time for people to come to terms with this.”
Father opened his mouth, but couldn’t say anything. He brought his Bible up to look for a fitting verse, but did not open it.
”You’ll stay on, of course. Not having a Father at Saint Jude’s would be like that San Diego team not having that big chicken.”
Chapter 13
Father Chuck stood for a few moments looking at Mr. Petty. Then he blinked a few times and woodenly turned and walked out the door. He stopped only at his office to take a couple swigs of his whiskey before walking out to the Butt Hutt and lighting up. For the moment he was alone with his Winstons, unable to fully comprehend what had happened. He sat out in the Butt Hutt, figuring it out. Then once he figured it out, he sat out in the Butt Hutt angry, bitter, and drunk.
“The altar boy replies, ‘a candy bar and a pat on the head.” Mr. Petty said. “Okay. Construction, as you guys well know, is underway on converting fifty-three patient rooms to office space that we can rent out. This will put our number of beds to one hundred fifty.”
One seventy-five. One seventy-five. The number one seventy-five floated around Mr. Seuss’s head. His department was one of the few that had to account for every patient, so for Seuss, the higher the current census the more important he was. This week, his importance was hovering at one hundred and seventy five on a scale of 203 beds. “Wait a minute,” Seuss found his mouth saying. “Our census of those still alive is one hundred and seventy-five. How can that be? Is the only one wondering, me? How can we remodel rooms, put up molding and trim, when sick people are still using them?”
“Our construction crews only work in the rooms when the patients are sleeping or comatose, so as not to interfere with medical treatment,” Liberace pitched. “And really, most of the rooms being eliminated that are still needed are in the Geriatrics wing. We can wheel those people out wherever. They just sit there and moan all day anyway.”
The Director of Geriatrics jumped up. “It is my expert opinion that you are right, I guess.”
Mr. Petty motioned for the Geriatric Director to sit down. “This conversation is wasted time. It is already happening. Regardless of how many patients are in those rooms; our budget analysis does not show a need for them. It does show that we need the rent for those rooms.
“Okay. Next item of business is my plan on creating three new departments. I will scout for new directors at my next family reunion. But what we need to do today is decide where we can put these new departments.” Petty stood up and put a diagram of the hospital with the floor plans to each floor on an easel. “This is what I want to do. I want to put my new Wing of Holistic Organizations on the first floor.” He pointed to the first floor with the WHO department carved out of patient rooms. “I want to put my Wing of Healthy Attitudes Today on the floor above that and my Wing of Healing Youths on the floor above that.” His diagram showed WHAT on the second floor and WHY on the third. “Does everyone understand?”
“What?” They all said in unison.
“WHAT is on second.”
“Who’s on second?” Dr. Daneeka asked.
“No. WHO is on the first.”
“I’ll take this,” Montgomery Hall said. “Who’s on the first?”
“That’s right. It’s simple.”
The directors began to random take turns talking. “Then Who is it on first?”
“Right. Along with the other departments already there. WHAT will be on second and WHY will be on third.”
“What will be on the second and third floors? And what will be on the first floor for the matter?”
“No. WHAT is only on the second floor. Please just discuss WHAT will be on second.”
“Why?”
“WHY will be on the third floor.”
“Why?”
“Yes. It will be on the third floor. I know-the third floor. You are thinking why WHY on the third floor, but it makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“I value your input, Mr. Freedman. But it doesn’t make sense to put WHAT on the third floor.”
“What will be on the third floor?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Mr. Skinner. We can discuss putting WHAT on the third floor, but don’t tell me who is going on the third floor.”
“WHO is on the first floor,” Mr. Hall ventured.
“Who is on the first floor?”
“Mr. Hall just said that, Mr. Swine. Please pay attention.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Don’t try to fake that you were paying attention. We were talking about WHAT and WHO and WHY.”
“Screw you, Petty.”
“How did you hear about my pet project? It’s not even included in these remodeling plans. My Skin Cancer Resource and Effective Waiting with Unity will be on a separate site.”
“Why?”
“No. SCREWWU will be on a separate site.”
“Screw you, Petty.”
“That’s right.”
Chapter 14
Bigger sat in Seuss’s office with Seuss and someone he didn’t know that was his immediate supervisor. She was the new team guider for the kitchen, replacing Ester’s supervisor position. Ester was demoted, but because she had topped out on of her pay scale fifteen years ago, she got to keep her close to eight dollar an hour pay. She also continued on with all of her duties. So the Team Guider’s workload was rather light, but some would say still important. Although she had never worked in a kitchen, she had a B.S. in Nutrition, fiery red hair and a slim figure.
“I don’t know why I thought you would like me dyeing my hair white, but I did,” Bigger explained with tears in his eyes and a pounding in his skull. “It seemed like a good idea last night. I am trying to do right, Mr. Seuss. Ma’am.”
Seuss did not believe Bigger’s story or his tears and he did not manage his department on emotions, but on carefully spelled out rules. One of the rules he had created for himself was to never fire someone who was crying. The second rule he had was never fire someone when the new baker hadn’t shown up in the last three days. “Okay, just go back to work then.” Seuss would also have asked his new team guider if she had anything to add, but he couldn’t remember her name either.
Bigger went out the Butt Hutt t
o talk to Joe. A cold, fierce wind hit him as he walked across the small lawn to the yellowed door. It was about to storm and darker out than when he had gotten into work. Joe was in his usual corner of the cold, dark and stained room. But it surprised Bigger to see an extremely fat man with as many chins as he had wrinkles on his forehead at a table, and Father Chuck sitting in the back corner looking like he was going to kill someone. Things have definitely changed around here, Bigger thought. Father usually doesn’t come in here until his mid-morning toot of whiskey.
Joe was smoking and talking with Dan from the Audio/Visual Department. Dan was the specialist who handled all the filming and video taping needs of the hospital with only one assistant. Lately, when Dan was not bemoaning his work schedule, he was asking for advice about his bride of eight months. That was being married just long enough to realize he was doomed, but not long enough to accept it. For these reasons, Bigger knew it didn’t matter if he interrupted Joe.
Joe kicked a chair across the room and paced angrily.
“Nice clothes, hair and face, Bigger,” Joe said in a dissipating growl. “Why are you crying, Bigger? Are you that hung over?” Joe looked at his friend. “Actually, I heard why. Come sit down, Biggs.”
Bigger sat down on an old waiting room chair that had been in the Butt Hutt since the seventies. “I have never seen you like this. Why are you pissed off, Joe? Oh, sorry, Father.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bigger. I got bigger things to worry about than you using the P word. They have renamed me Spiritual Concerns Services and bill patients a consultant fee if I visit them, but I am not allowed to mention God. Which is a good thing because I am now convinced that He can’t hold a candle to modern medicine.” Father jerked his head away then as Bigger, Dan and Joe stared at him.
“You see Joe like this everyday, Bigger,” Dan said, putting his hand on Joe’s shoulder. Dan had blonde hair, an adolescent mustache and red eyeglasses. He had been too nerdy in college to smoke, but now that he was married, he smoked and kept a bottle of caffeinated Pepsi in his desk.
“Hey, how’s the wife, Dan?” Bigger asked, then felt bad for making the jab.
Before Dan could get into one of his whining sessions, Joe said, “I should have known better, but I actually believed those people when they said all of us that hadn’t had our wages go up were finally going to get a raise. I know you don’t care about a future here, Bigger, but this is my career. I need a raise just for the sake of getting a raise.”
“I’d take a raise,” Bigger said looking up from massaging his forehead. “Ain’t they giving us one?”
“Dan says no.” Joe lit a new cigarette off his old one and snubbed the old one out. His fingers trembled as he did so. “Because if they give us kitchen workers, the housekeepers and the guys in central supply--all of us at the bottom--more money, then that would throw off the pay scale. If they give us a raise then they would have to give raises to everyone above us which is friggin’ everyone, a raise. Well, they don’t want to do that because the professionals all got raises at the beginning of the friggin’ decade.” Joe picked up the metal ashtray and flung it across the room. “In other words, we don’t make enough god-damn money to get a raise.”
“So let’s get this union going,” Dan said in cheerleader fashion. “Everyone is talking about unionizing, but this may get people to actually do something.”
“Yeah,” Bigger said, his spirits returning with a little color in his cheeks.
“No,” Joe said flicking his ashes on the floor. “It doesn’t pay. This proves to me that losers always lose. And we are losers.”
This took the wind out of Dan’s sail. “My wife wouldn’t want me in a union, anyway.” Dan stood up to leave. “I mean, I know, I’m not a loser. I already got my raise. But you’re right, Joe, in the end the administration will win. Those guys are my friends and even I’ll admit that they hate us.”
“I hate them first,” Joe said. “But I’m too busy to cultivate my hate like the management does. It’s our job to work, but their job to screw us over. Basically, their meetings, which are all they do, are strategy meetings to battle their employees and keep us in check. They are able to hate us employees eight hours a day, five days a week.”
“Perhaps only the lonely and bitter make it to the top,” Bigger said. “Maybe that’s the secret of their success.”
“I thought I told you to shut up, Casper,” Father Chuck said, flicking his cigarette ash at Bigger.
The words lonely and bitter slammed around in Dan’s head. They had been floating around since his honeymoon, but they took on pointed edges with Bigger saying them. He was happy with his light workload, weighty paycheck and ample vacation allotment, but each day as a professional with a stable home life did seem to make him more bitter and lonely. So because his wife would hate it and because Bigger dared him, he decided that he would help organize the union. “It will serve the bitch right,” he said aloud.
“Ah, Hello, Dan.” Bigger raised a white eyebrow. “What will serve your wife right?”
“I changed my mind. Plenty of businesses have a union and a union is the only thing that could make things better here. So I’m going to do what I can do to get one here.” Dan pictured himself as a renegade with his bosses, but then in the end, them thanking him for making things better at the hospital and then coming to him for help because the employees trusted him so much.
“I dare you,” Bigger said.
Joe went to the slimy, yellow window and looked out to the charcoal, churning sky. For a moment he imagined, a tornado hitting the Butt Hutt and everyone having to hold on to the fat man in the corner to keep from blowing away. “Okay, I have two questions. The first is why an audio/visual geek making sixty thousand a year to push TVs on carts around care about a union. My second question is why in the hell did you dye your hair white, Bigger?” He turned to look at Bigger and his frost color hair.
Bigger looked down at his white shoes. “Joe you are my best friend. That has nothing to do with why, but I wanted to let you know. Anyway, I wanted to conform like you told me to do last night. I thought if white clothes were sanitary, then white hair would be sanitary. At least, that’s what I believe I thought. I don’t actually remember dyeing my hair. But I want to be great at this job. I have to be.”
“No you don’t. Seuss isn’t going to fire you and they pay you the same whether you do a good job or a crappy one.”
“But if I can’t handle this peon job, then when what can I handle? I couldn’t handle being fired from this stupid job. What would my dad say? He put himself through college doing odd jobs and then became a professor.”
Joe threw his cigarette to the floor. “What does that mean? Odd jobs. Did he have jobs that were odd? Did he have to clothe dead people at funeral homes or was he a circus geek? I hate that phrase ‘odd jobs-”
“Anyway,” Dan butted in. “I will tell you why I am going to get this union going. Are you guys listening?”
“No,” they said. Joe threw the door open and he and Bigger ran through the slapping rain.
Inside, they put on their white hats. Joe put on his apron. “You know why Dan wants to form a union don’t you?”
Bigger shook his head.
“Its because whenever St. Jude’s employees try to fight back and demand that the administration treat them fairly, the administrators say and do anything so that they come out on top. See? That is where that tie-wearing, newsletter reading, stock-having slacker relates to us. We have the board of trustees and he has his wife.”
Chapter 15
Mr. Grumby sat behind his desk with his hands folded on his blank planner. It was ten minutes to five. Tomorrow, Mr. Petty would officially take over Grumby’s office and he would be gone. Betty stood in front of Grumby with a pen and a pad of paper in hand. She felt bad for him having to watch while Petty took over his job. Mr. Grumby had been quiet all day, until now when he had called her into his office. “Come in here please,” he had said. “I want to
perform my last official act as president of Saint Jude’s Hospital and Medical Center.”
“Heather, will you stroke my penis?” he asked Betty.
“What?”
“Touch it. Please, my wife left me two years ago,” Grumby pleaded. “And my girlfriend is so cold and unsympathetic now. I just need human contact. Something to let me know I still exist.” He stood up and walked around his desk. “It has been forever since anyone has touched me even in a friendly way. A child’s hug. A pat on the back. A hand touching another’s arm in reassurance. My life is devoid of all of those intangible things a person needs to survive.”
“But you didn’t ask me for those things, Jonas. You asked me to pet your one-eyed mole.” As Grumby moved forward, she got ready to touch his genitals with her knee.
“Well, if you’re going to ask a favor, you may as well ask for what you really want.”
Chapter 16
Dykes smelled her cigarette and bacon breath as he got on the elevator. He went to a corner and rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. She gave him a smile and a wink. “There is a union meeting tonight, my friend. We need everyone there. Are you coming?”
“Sure,” Dykes lied, surprised how everyone was united in organizing the union and how potent her breath was. Dykes crunched his eyes shut. The nurse stopped talking and looked at the floor indicator.
He felt the elevator stop and its doors open and shut, but when he opened his eyes back up, she was still there. What was worse was that she was looking at him again. He gave out a feverous moan, but she still talked to him. “Hope to see you there.”
The Tao of Apathy Page 6