Thank you Jim and Katie at The Legendary!
Anya's Frustrating Friday Morning at the Reeza Cheney Surgery Center
by MaryAnne Kolton
She’s cold. Shivering cold.
“Excuse me,” she says.
There are at least ten women inside
a big circular work area directly across from her cubicle.
No one responds.
“Excuse me please,” Anya repeats,
louder this time.
There’s a lot of noise out
there. Laughing, jangling bits of
singing, more laughing. She can’t get
off the gurney, wired as she is to a pole with two bags of something dripping
through tubes into the vein on the back of her left hand.
“Hello!” She hollers.
“Can anybody over there hear me?”
An annoyed looking, middle-aged
women with striking violet-red hair comes to her and says, “You don’t have to
yell you know. We’re just across the way
at the desk. Is there something you
need?”
Anya debates with herself for about
ten seconds before deciding it is not worth trying to explain that she did call
politely several times. Now she is so
cold her teeth are chattering. She
stutters out, “Could I have another blanket, please? I’m freezing.”
The woman makes a tsk and sigh
sound of annoyance at Anya before she walks away.
The surgery facilitator had told
them although Anya was not scheduled until eight o’clock they must arrive two
hours beforehand. They left home at
four-thirty this morning allowing an hour and a half for the hour trip. Snowflakes the size of nickels had been
falling all night long. Anya and her
husband Marcus knew the freeway should
be plowed but could not be certain. When
they pulled into the parking lot after a harrowing slip and slide trip, the
office manager was just opening the center.
“We’re all running a bit late this
morning. Come in and I’ll get you
situated.”
Marcus was asked to wait in an
empty waiting room, cold like an icehouse, as the heat slowly pumped through
the building. That was the last Anya saw
of him.
She was taken to a cubicle and told
to change into the thin, much-laundered hospital gown and climb onto the
gurney. Nurses, anesthetists and
clerical workers were beginning to surface.
One of them brought her a thin, heated blanket and started an IV. When Anya asked what was in the bags on the
pole, the nurse told her it was just something to make her “more comfortable.” Anya wanted to tell her she would be a lot
more comfortable if she was home in her own bed wrapped in her down
comforter.
Even though she had been the first
to arrive, there were three surgeries scheduled before hers. None of those people were here yet. Apparently the doctor had also called and said
she was going to be somewhat delayed.
The nurse, Liz, told Anya she might as well get some sleep if she could
since she was in for a long wait.
“I’m too cold to sleep.” Anya grumbled. Within minutes Liz had brought her another
heated cotton blanket. She did not close
the sliding curtain, so Anya could view all that transpired across from
her. Not once did anyone look in her
direction.
As the nurses gathered behind the
workstation there was much talk of children kept home because of a snow day,
finding sitters and the slow pace of the Friday morning surgeries.
They were all anxious to get home.
As the
morning wore on and the doctor finally arrived, the nurses came and went from
the station, three or four at a time.
Often it seemed they were all there, but Anya could not tell for
sure. She asked if her husband could
come back and keep her company. The
answer was no.
Now the
nurses were talking about going out for lunch when they were done for the
morning. A poll was taken as to who
liked their Margaritas frozen and who preferred them straight up. One of them, the blonde girl who had implied
she had something of great import to tell Anya and looked to be fifteen, maybe sixteen, was
looking for shoes at an online site called Shoe Story. Soon they were all hanging over her shoulder
and discussing the merits of first one pair and then another. Anya learned that the redheaded nurse was the
Supervisor. She took part in both
discussions. Never chided any of the
nurses for being on the computer instead of seeing to patients. The doctor came to the desk twice to hand
over paperwork and both times shared her opinion about the current pair of
shoes on the screen.
No one
checked on her.
Upon arriving, she had handed over
a folder of paperwork they had sent her in the mail three weeks ago. She was told to fill it out and bring it with
her. Apparently, that told them
everything they needed to know about her.
To Anya it seemed like she had been there for hours. Cold, anxious, and upset by the lack of
professionalism.
Just as the
disgruntled charge nurse finally brought her another warmed blanket, a young
man who said he was the anesthesiologist came over to ask her name and how she
was doing. Before Anya could answer him,
he was called away by someone else and never returned.
A little later, two of the young women
from the work desk came bustling into the room, adjusted her IV and wheeled her
down the hall to the operating room. On the way
there, the now flustered anesthesiologist ran up to them, shoved a clipboard and
pen at Anya and asked her to sign her name at the bottom of a statement saying
he had discussed all the possible ramifications of the anesthesia he was about
to administer. Still rolling, she signed rather than argue. In the operating suite she was met by five or six
gowned and masked people, all wearing silly-looking, flattened, chef-like hats.
One of them said, “Hi, Anya. I’m Doctor Ellen Ralston. Do you remember me?”
Now this snip of a girl was
treating her as if she was senile. That,
for Anya, was the last straw.
“Yes, Ellen, I do remember
you. It was only four weeks ago that we
met. You have a beautiful clock in your
office that has stopped because you are too lazy to replace the battery. You wear tight jeans, sweaters and boots to
see patients. Your hands are very
cold. You are divorced with no
children. Never really wanted any. You like frozen Margaritas with lots of
coarse salt on the rim of the glass and are partial to open-toed platform shoes
with at least five-inch heels which you believe show off your well-developed
runner’s calves to good advantage.
There’s a lot more, most of which I learned from listening to the girls
who work for you while I waited. The
weekend with the Egyptian surgeon? Shall
I go on?”
“Well, let’s get started,” said Dr
Ralston through a tight smile, looking away from Anya “Put her to sleep. Now.”
The young man who said he was the
anesthesiologist leaned over Anya and the last thing she remembered was the
wink and the gloved thumbs up he gave her before he sent her off to the valley of nothingness.
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