Psych Ward Zombies (2 page)

He placed his belongings on his desk and sighed. The hands of the small clock on his desk reached out to display exactly one o’clock. “Just in time,” Dave mumbled to himself, relieved that his shift was off to an uneventful start. Still, there was a sense of uneasiness he could not shake. Why had Devlin made such a big deal about being on time? And why hadn’t he seen any of the other physicians in the hallway as he had walked in?

He paused for a moment, trying to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. Failing to reach any brilliant revelation, pushed the thought from his mind and sat down at his desk. The desk and office chair were both specially-made for little people. They had been provided by the hospital, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Dav
e spent a few minutes looking through his work emails. His mind was preoccupied with the stress of needing to get all his regular work done in the three hours before the other physicians would leave for the day. At that point he would be left with responsibility for all five wards, and the barrage of crisis calls would surely keep him from getting any work done on his regular ward. He stared at the computer, deleting one email after another about administrative requirements, new regulations, and other forms of micro-management. He happened to glance at the bottom corner of his screen, where a small blue box contained the words “Medical Staff Meeting: 12 minutes overdue”.

“Holy crap!
”

Suddenly it all made sense. Today was the monthly staff meeting for the physicians, and Dr. Devlin, as Medical Director, was in charge of the meeting. The meeting was supposed to start at one o’clock, but Dave had been so immersed in his dread that he had completely forgotten about it. Devlin was intimidating even under normal circumstances, so Dave did not want to see him angry. He grabbed his pen and clipboard, and bolted from his office. The door slammed behind him, locking automatically
.

The meeting was held in a conference room located in the Administration Tower. As the name implies, the only offices in the tower were for the administrative staff. This layout was somewhat unfortunate, as it strongly reinforced the perception among the hospital employees that the administrators were sequestered away in their ivory tower, oblivious to how things worked on the wards. While it was referred to as a “tower”, the Administration Tower was actually only two stories tall. From the outside, the appearance suggested a squat guard tower overlooking a sprawling prison. The tower had an elevator, but Dave had decided to run up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator car. Looking back, he now wished he had elected to wait the additional 45 seconds, rather than walking into the room out of breath and panting.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and slipped into the room with the hope that no one would notice him.
Maybe he could duck under a table. As soon as he entered, however, it became clear that all eyes were on him. Devlin had been speaking forcefully about the quality of the doctors’ handwriting in the medical charts, but he stopped abruptly in mid-sentence as Dave tried to tiptoe into the room. Dave searched for an empty seat at the conference table and located one at the far end of the table. The uncomfortable silence was broken by the shrill squeak of the chair.

“Why, Doctor Hexer, how kind of you to grace us with your presence.” Devlin’s voice was icy cold, but with a hint of hostile playfulness. It made Dave feel like a mouse being toyed with by a hungry cat
.

Devlin continued, “
In the parking lot, you said you would be here
short
ly.  In some ways, it appears you were telling the truth.” Devlin let out a small snicker and then continued, “I suppose my warning to you in the parking lot fell on deaf ears?” The overgrown eyebrows knitted together menacingly, like two giant woolly caterpillars locked in hand-to-hand combat.

“Um
... yes.” Dave replied hesitantly. “I mean, no. I got held up on the ward. Um, there was a patient emergency I had to attend to.” Dave tossed this lie into the center of the room like a hand grenade, hoping an explosion of empathy would negate all the tension he was feeling. It was a dud.

Devlin looked straight through him. “I will make a note in your personnel file about your skills in handling emergencies, Doctor Hexer. It will be right below the note about your disregard for mandatory staff meetings.”

“Wow, a note in my personnel file! I’m so scared! Why don’t you shove that personnel file up your butthole?!”

Those are the words Dave wanted to say, but did not. Instead, he knew that Devlin had already sensed victory in this brief verbal skirmish, so Dave decided to just keep quiet before things got worse. He bit his tongue and stared at his clipboard
. Anger boiled inside him.

As Devlin resumed his monologue on quality standards for medical documentation, Dave raised his eyes just enough to take a quick glance around the room. He was surrounded at the table by the other four physicians who worked in the hospital. From the left to the right sat Doctors Horton, Golski, Hassan, and Thompson. He generally liked his coworkers. They seemed to be good people and they worked hard to help their patients, though in general
they were all a little odd. Shrinks can be a flaky bunch. Dave thought the old saying was true, that to become a psychiatrist you had to be a little crazy yourself. Of course, Dave rationalized that the saying did not actually apply to him.

Horton was a good friend, and maybe the most normal of the bunch. He and Dave shared the same sense of humor. The two were able to recognize the idiocy of the hospital administration, and they often commiserated over painful topics such as staff meetings. Dave glanced over at Horton and gave an almost imperceptible grin as the two exchanged knowing looks
.

Golski had emigrated from some Eastern European country as a young child. He had become very Americanized through his adult years, yet he retained just enough of his foreign accent to give him an exotic flair. He was a brilliant man and a very good psychiatrist
.

Hassan was another immigrant, coming to the US after medical school. He had a much harder time than Golski with the language and culture barriers. His patients appreciated his friendly personality and warm interaction enough to forgive his weakness with the English language
.

Thompson was an odd duck, definitely the most eccentric psychiatrist on staff at the hospital. She was very short, almost as wide as she was tall, and had a booming laugh that would reverberate through the halls. Her sense of humor made all the staff and patients love her. She was well-known for dressing in brightly adorned sweaters with holiday themes. This year’s “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” sweater was a particularly stirring example. Each of her signature sweaters was usually peppered with about 3 pounds of cat hair, as Thompson harbored 15 feline friends at home
.

Devlin was not particularly liked by staff or patients. His creepy appearance, unnerving stares, and caustic interpersonal style made most people shy away from him. This was perhaps what Devlin wanted, as he spent most of his time behind closed doors in his office on the top floor of the Administration Tower. Rumors swirled among the hospital staff about what Devlin did inside his office all day. Dave imagined Devlin was probably training flying monkeys.

The meeting proceeded to grind on at a glacial pace. Dave thought of all the work he had to get done by four o’clock, and knew that every minute spent in this tedious meeting would be one less minute of actually being productive. At any other time he might have considered leaving the meeting early, but he was already in trouble. His eyes roamed the room and noticed a box of doughnuts that lay at the far end of the table. Most of the doughnuts had been eaten by his colleagues, but a few remained. Dave thought about asking someone to pass him the box, but he decided not draw any more attention to himself. He sat quietly.

After a couple hours of mental torture, the meeting drew to a close. Devlin instructed that all the doctors except Dave would need to come to the Administration Tower to sign some paperwork after the meeting. Dave would be allowed to sign the papers tomorrow when he had more time. The other doctors stood and formed a procession out the door. Dave remembered the doughnuts and looked to the table to grab one. The box had already been snatched up by Dr Thompson, who carried it under her arm like a football. Dave figured the remaining doughnuts were probably covered in cat hair now anyway, so he lost his appetite. He turned and was startled to see Devlin standing behind him. He almost let out a yelp, but managed to stifle it into a small cough
.

Devlin began speaking, not waiting for Dave to acknowledge his presence. “We have a late admission to B Ward this evening. This is a high interest patient, coming from the state prison. Please ensure that you follow all procedures and regulations with this patient. I will b
e checking up on his status when I return in the morning. I trust you will not come up
short
in your duties.” With that, Devlin abruptly turned and walked out the door, leaving Dave standing at the conference table with more questions than answers.

Horton approached Dave from the side, having waited for Devlin to clear out. “Wow, dude, I thought he was going to bite your head off. Literally.
”

“Yeah, well, he’s just lucky I didn’t go all ninja on him,” Dave responded, saying the words a bit louder than he had intended. He cringed and glanced into the hallway for a moment, half expecting Devlin to come charging back in.

“I’d like to see that,” Horton laughed. He made karate chopping gestures with his hands. “Hey, what’s new with your Halloween display?”

Dave loved to talk about Halloween and could go on for hours about his plans for the holiday. However, he was in a hurry at the moment so he kept his answer brief. “Oh man, you'll love it. I’ve got this really cool idea where I have a fake zombie locked in a cage by my front door.
When a trick-or-treater steps onto the porch, the cage will automatically open up and the zombie will jump out at the kid. It should get lots of screams.”

“Sounds awesome. I c
an’t wait to see how it turns out. Are you the doctor on call tonight?”

Dave frowned as the conversation switched from
Halloween to the night shift. “Yes, unfortunately.”

Horton nodded, fully understanding the negativity in Dave’s voice. “Well if it’s any consolation, my A Ward is looking pretty good. Everything is squared away, so there shouldn’t be any surprises tonight.”

“Famous last words. Thanks for jinxing me,” Dave chided.

Horton could not resist giving Dave some grief. “Yeah, you're screwed now. The whole hospital is going to go nuts tonight!
”

Dave bristled at his friend's humor. Merely joking about the night shift was enough to give
Dave anxiety.

“Yeah,
yeah. I gotta go. Some of us have work to do,” he said, abruptly cutting the conversation short. He did not intend to be curt, but the discussion was causing his anxiety to surge. Dave gave a quick but friendly wave before leaving the conference room and heading toward B Ward.

Back at B ward, he went directly to the room behind the nursing station where his patients’ medical charts were kept. He sat down at a low counter top and took out the “To Do” list the nurses had left him. The list contained all the issues requiring physician intervention that had arisen since yesterday. It involved writing orders in the chart for medication changes, raising or reducing privilege levels for certain patients, and requesting laboratory tests. It was mostly busy work, demanding a lot of time but not much actual thinking. Dave hustled through the list as fast as possible. He kept his head down and hoped that no one would interrupt his groove. He was able to get the list completed by three-thirty, leaving an uninterrupted half hour before his on-call shift would start
.

He decided to spend that half hour talking with the nurses about how the patients on the ward were doing. He would have preferred talking to each patient individually, but the time crunch meant that he had to be as efficient as possible. The nurses usually had their finger on the pulse of the ward, both literally and figuratively. They could tell him everything he needed to know in the span of just a few minutes
.

Dave glanced out to the nursing station desk and saw one of his favorite nurses, a
n Asian-appearing woman named Janet Foo. He admired Janet because she was intelligent and she treated her patients well. She was respected throughout the hospital for her kindness and her technical skills as a nurse. She was also young and fairly pretty, which made her even more popular among the male staff members and patients.

Janet’s parents had been filthy rich, having made their fortune in the snack food industry. Their most noteworthy products included butter-flavored soda, tortillas made from candy corn, and high fructose mouthwash. In addition, they revolutionized the edible underwear industry with their prune-flavored granny panties.
While their businesses were lucrative, both parents died from obesity-induced heart disease at an early age. Janet was their only heir, so she inherited her parents’ vast estate after their deaths.

Having witnessed the health problems her parents’ companies had wrought on the world (and on themselves), Janet retained ownership of the businesses but avoided any involvement in the day to day operations. She had also become somewhat of a health and nutrition fanatic as a response to her parents’ deaths. Dave knew that much of her free time was spent in the gym or doing some type of exercise. Janet was also meticulous about eating healthy foods. Lately she was into the Paleo diet trend, and Dave liked to tease her about eating sticks, leaves, and small animals
.

She was financially set for life. However, after she had inherited her fortune three years ago she had continued her job at the hospital on a part-time basis. She had considered nursing to be a calling rather than a job, so she enjoyed it. Her dream had always been to become an actress, but helping her patients had brought her far more reward than the numerous failed auditions. She had recently been toying with the idea of bankrolling her own movie production, but had not actively pursued the idea.

Dave approached Janet and saw that she was engaged in paperwork. He paused, allowing her to finish writing, and then got her attention.

“Hey, Janet. How’s it going?” he asked, settling into a rolling office chair beside her
.

“Oh, you know, just another day in paradise. Everybody’s had a pretty good day, I think. No drama yet.”

Dave’s pulse quickened a little bit at the mere suggestion of drama. “What do you mean, ‘yet’? Do you know something I don’t?”

“Well, we have the inmate coming in later tonight. The cops are bringing him from across the state, so there’s no telling when he’ll get here.”

Dave relaxed a little. An admission to the ward was not a big deal, and he had already known about it from his odd discussion with Devlin earlier. “Do we have any paperwork on this new guy yet?”

“Sure. It’s over there on the shelf,” she replied, gesturing back toward the chart room.

Dave pushed against the desk with his feet, propelling the wheeled office chair toward the entrance of the chart room. The chair glided across the floor and came to an abrupt stop when Dave’s knees bumped against a metal filing cabinet. He swiveled the chair and reached atop a shelf to grab a large envelope.