Page 26 of The Devil You Know
He thinks about it for a minute. “I’m pretty sure she had a goiter.”
So what does that have to do with your toe hurting???I want to scream the words at him, but I keep my mouth clamped shut. I’m sure in Mr. Katz’s brain, it all makes sense. And the truth is, I don’t really want to know.
I examine Mr. Katz’s feet (wearing two layers of gloves). I don’t see any signs of joint swelling associated with a gout attack. But he has a horrible case of fungus on his toes, so I write him a prescription for an antifungal cream, and I also order a blood uric acid level, which is a test of the crystals that form gout. Even though I’m ninety-nine percent sure he doesn’t have gout.
“Dr. McGill,” he says after I’m done examining him. “Do you think that there’s any chance that this could be…” He lowers his voice several notches. “Cancer?”
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s not cancer. Definitely not.”
Hell, it’s not even gout. It’snothing.
“Thank yousomuch, Dr. McGill,” Mr. Katz tells me. He shakes my hand with warm, slightly stiff fingers. “It always makes me feel a lot better when I get to see you.”
I know it does. That’s why even if Barbara had checked with me, I would have allowed her to squeeze him in.
“My pleasure,” I say.
After Mr. Katz leaves, I notice that we’re out of the white paper that I roll onto the examining tables. The roll is completely empty. I head down the hallway, to the waiting room. Barbara is sitting at her desk, her blondmullet teased to the extreme, texting someone on her phone while two people wait. I don’t think she’s even checked them off yet.
“Barbara?” I say.
After about fifteen seconds, she looks up. “Yes?”
“I’m out of the paper roll for the examining table,” I tell her.
Barbara shrugs like I’ve told her something very uninteresting. “Oh.”
“Could you help me to change it?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “That’s not my job.”
Of course. If it doesn’t involve making a check on a sheet of paper, it’s not her job. “Well, do you know where I can find more paper rolls?”
She shrugs again. “Supply closet, maybe?”
There’s a supply closet all the way at the end of the hallway that I try desperately not to enter. First of all, it smells like mold. Probably because there’s mold in there. Second of all, it’s so packed with supplies that it’s dangerous to go in there. You never know when an ACE wrap will fall down on your head and knock you unconscious.
Back when I started working here, I grabbed a bunch of supplies from another primary care unit’s closet that isn’t as scary as ours, and stashed them away, so I’ve been mostly using that and replenishing as needed. But I don’t think it would look right to go to another unit and comeout with a huge roll of paper. I’ve got no choice but to venture into our own supply closet.
The moldy smell in the closet hits me the second I enter the room—I’ll be breathing through my mouth again. I wonder what’s growing in this place. I imagine spores entering my lungs and replicating in there. Ugh.
I start sorting through dusty boxes of bandages and syringes. Everything is covered in layer of dust, probably because everyone else is as afraid to use this supply closet as I am. I push aside a plaster mold of someone’s foot, crouching on the ground to see if there are any paper rolls. But there’s no sign of them.
I wonder who was changing the rolls up to this point. The paper roll fairy? And why did they suddenly stop?
Finally, I spy a huge cardboard box up on a top shelf that looks promising. The only problem is that I can only just barely reach it on my tippy toes. If I were to nudge it off the shelf, it would almost certainly fall on my head and possibly kill me. Maybe I could stand on a chair. All the chairs in the examining room are rolling chairs, but if I go to the waiting room—
“What are youdoingin there?”
I whirl around and see none other than Ryan Reilly standing behind me. He’s wearing his green scrubs again, he’s got his arms folded across his chest, and he looks mildly amused.
“I’m trying to find paper rolls for the examining table,” I explain.
Ryan raises his eyebrows at me. “And how is that your job?”
“Look,” I say, “I think they’re in that box up there. Could you help me or not?”
He grins. “Your wish is my command.”
