Page 36 of The Devil You Know
“Um.” I cross my legs. “Mr. Katz, you’ve gained about twenty pounds since your wife died, haven’t you? Maybe the extra weight is why your arms are rubbing against your chest.”
His eyes widen. “You really think so?”
“Definitely.”
“But I’ve felt… tired.” He shakes his head. “Really tired.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re tired all the time?”
“Not all the time, no,” he says. “Just when I use my computer. To do the email.”
I stand up from my stool. “You don’t have cancer, Mr. Katz. You just need to lose a little weight.”
He’s so incredibly relieved that he can’t stop shaking my hand and thanking me. Well, even if everyone else in the world hates me, at least Mr. Katz likes me.
After Mr. Katz leaves the room, I notice that we are not only out of clean gowns, but the laundry basket in the room is absolutely overflowing. In the past, housekeeping has always emptied it, but somehow it hasn’t happened recently. Maybe I was supposed to tip them at Christmas?
I’ve got five minutes before my next patient. I walk down the hall, where Barbara is affixing fake nails onto her real nails. I’ve never seen a person so interested in nailcare—mine are bitten to quicks. For a short time between graduation from residency and the birth of Leah, I had nice, healthy nails. But that’s a distant memory.
“Barbara,” I say. “The laundry basket in my examining room is full. And I don’t have any clean gowns in there.”
Barbara looks up at me with her mascaraed eyes. “It’s not my job to take care of that.”
“Well, could you please call housekeeping then?” I ask. “I need to finish documenting before my next patient.”
“It’s not my job,” she repeats, more firmly this time.
I sigh. “Is there any chance you could talk to them as a favor to me?”
“It’s not my job,” Barbara says, like a robot who’s gotten stuck in some circuit loop.
“Fine,” I say, more angrily than I intended. Or maybe just as angrily as I intended.
I’m furious at Barbara. She is the most useless person on the entire planet. Her entire job is somehow just to check off boxes on a piece of paper, and she doesn’t even dothatright half the time. Yet no degree of laziness or incompetence will be enough to get her out of here. Lisa always says that it’s almost impossible to get fired at the VA. The only way to do it is to make babies with a dead patient… twice. “Because the first time, you’d only get a warning,” she told me.
I march out of the waiting area. I don’t have much time before my next patient, but I need gowns. I peek in all the open exam rooms, but they all appear to be barren. Damn it.
Finally, I decide to call housekeeping. I punch in zero for the operator and wait an agonizing two minutes before a bored-sounding voice answers, “Hello?”
“Can you transfer me to housekeeping?” I ask.
I hear some shuffling of papers, and for a moment, I’m terrified that the operator will announce that it’s not her job to do that. Finally, without further explanation, I hear ringing on the other line. I wait through half a dozen rings before I hear a recorded voice: “You’ve reached the housekeeping department…”
I look at my watch. I don’t want to be late to seeing my next patient, but I’ve got to have new gowns and I also don’t want an overflowing basket of laundry in my room. Maybe I can run down to housekeeping in the basement and be back in just a few minutes.
Well, it’s not like I have much of a choice.
The laundry basket is on wheels, so at least I’ve got that going for me. But it weighs about a thousand pounds. Still, once I start pushing it, it’s not so bad. Maybe after I take it down in the elevator, George the elevator guy can help me push it to housekeeping.
(That was a joke.)
I push the button for the elevator and wait patiently, making calculations in my head to determine whether the cart will fit through the elevator doors or if I’ll have to use the service elevator. That’s when the doors swing open and none other than Ryan Reilly is standing before me.
Great. Just what I need. To get mocked by Ryan.
His blue eyes widen when he sees me with the basket full of dirty gowns. “What are youdoing?”
“I couldn’t get ahold of housekeeping.” I can’t even meet his eyes. “We’re all out of clean gowns.”
