The Tao of Apathy (2 page)

“
It’s a shithole,” Joe said. With
his short hair sticking up and his face darkened with beard
stubble, Joe had the look of someone that had just woke up naked
with a bottle of vodka next to him.

“
Hung over, Joe?” John
asked.

“
Yeah. I woke up this morning to
find myself naked and clutching a bottle of Vodka.” Joe looked at
John’s sullen, heavy eyes. “You too, huh, Dykes?”

“
No.”

“
Dudes, why do you keep calling
him a dyke?” the new guy asked as he placed his paper hat on his
short, gelled hair.

John scowled at the guy before Bigger jumped
at introducing him. “Oops. Sorry. This is the new baker Justin.
Justin, this is John. He works in supply.”

“
Dude, why do they keep callin’
you a dyke?”

John looked at him. Again, Bigger jumped to
answer. “You see, John’s name used to be John Dykes. For three
years, we all called him Dykes, you know, because that was his
name. Then he changed his name to John Bacchus. But calling him
Bacchus is like too weird.”

“
Dude, so why don’t you change
your name back?”

Dykes shrugged his shoulders. “Now that it’s
not my name, I don’t mind being called that.”

Justin had such a confused look on his face
that he actually had to close one eye. “And why are you called
Bigger?”

“
It’s my name,” Bigger said as he
leaned an elbow on John. Bigger wasn’t as good-looking as Joe who,
at the moment, looked like hell with his hangover. But Joe had
jet-black hair, a strong chin, and dark eyes. Bigger had strawberry
red hair and a round, friendly face that made women call him a good
friend. Joe weighed fifty pounds more than Bigger who had a paunch,
but in high school Joe had been “Meat” while Bigger had been
“Doughboy.” Joe had a “if you got a tool like mine you need a shed
for it” beer belly while Bigger was just pudgy. Bigger was not thin
enough to be called “fit,” or fat enough to be Michigan
sexy.

And his choice of clothing didn’t help him to
be taken as a heartthrob or even be taken seriously. He had several
pairs of bright green pants and purple shoes for work and less
subtle clothes for the weekend.

“
Hey, Bigger,” Dykes said, looking
up uncomfortably at Bigger. “There’s an opening in supply. Why
don’t you put in for a transfer? I don’t have anyone to talk
to.”

Bigger shook his head. “Nah, I’m starting
college in fall, spring, or summer.”

Now Joe shook his head. “You’ve been saying
that since I’ve known ya. Hasn’t he, Dykes?”

Dykes frowned in assent. “What are you going
for Bigger? I went for Religious Studies.”

“
Really? Is that a major that you
can do something with?”

Dykes frowned again.

“
Maybe you should tell the new guy
here how to transfer over,” Joe said nodding his head towards
Justin.

“
No way, Dude. I love working in
the culinary arts. I worked at Arby’s for five years. I’m staying
in the kitchen and working up through the ranks. I’m going to go
punch in so when my boss comes in, I’m at my station.”

They watched the newbie walk down the hallway.
Joe chuckled. “I don’t know where he’s going, I’m training him. Not
that I’m going to teach him dick. He’ll be gone by the end of the
year.”

“
What the hell makes you say that,
Joe?” Dykes asked.

“
Because I never underestimate the
power of stupid people in management to play with your life. Or the
power of stupid people that call me dude to mess up.”

“
I really don’t care what I do as
long as the money’s there,” Bigger answered the question of what he
was going to go to school for. “Well its five after, we should
probably go punch in.”

They left John waiting for the elevator to go
to the basement. As they did every morning, Joe and Bigger went to
the time clock together and punched in, then looked across the
hallway to the conference room where the doctors
breakfasted.

And every morning, Joe said something like, “I
hate doctors.”

“
I really hate doctors,” Joe said.
Most mornings, Bigger would respond with, “Me, too.” This morning,
however, he didn’t respond because he was contemplating becoming a
doctor. For Bigger, the kitchen job was temporary until he chose
the career that he had been dreaming about his whole life. The
career had to be creative as he was creative as most people are who
wear green pants and purple shoes. It had to also propel him to
success and wealth, and his five years in the kitchen had not done
that. Now being a doctor seemed to be an important, prestigious job
that would make his father, a professor of Urban Studies, proud.
But in spite of the stirring in his gut to do more than struggle
through life and more importantly, the stirring in his wallet to
impress his dad, he decided against becoming a doctor, since Joe
hated them.

The doctors were eating their breakfast and
discussing the current billing process. With his mouth full of
doughnut, Doctor Priggish mumbled, “It’s not that I want a free
lunch, I just want the cafeteria to stop expecting me to pay for
it.” Priggish adjusted his trademark ensemble of a striped shirt
and slacks with suspenders; ran his fingers gingerly through his
hair weave; and slipped a handful of coffee stirrers into his
pocket. He was due in the psychiatric ward to prescribe the
medications that his staff told him to prescribe.

Coxcombry, one of the youngest doctors, gulped
his coffee and yearned for a pack of Camel Straights, which he had
got addicted to trying to get through his residency. Coxcombry was
thin and pale and handsome. As he accumulated wealth, he would
become even more handsome. But even now, all female employees
swooned over him because he was so modest. With great modesty, he
let the x-ray techs do his x-rays first; he let the housekeepers
bring in and care for the plants in his office; he let the
cafeteria ladies give him extra portions; he let the volunteers
push him in a wheelchair; and he let the nurses think they were his
equals. “I have my stethoscope, my pens, palm pilot, and
calculator,” he said patting the cigarettes and bottle of uppers in
his pockets, “I can’t carry around three bucks.”

“
All right, all right,” Doctor
Litigious said, standing to his full height of five-foot-four.
“It’s not like they are going to stop serving us. I like to
consider how much longer it takes them to make out the bill than it
does for us to throw it away-”

“
I swear I go in there just to ask
them what they are serving and they charge me the price of a meal,”
Dr. Supercilious said.

“
What we need to decide right now
is how we are going to attack this hospital for more
money.”

“
But the hospital lost money last
year,” Dr. Supercilious said soaking a sausage in syrup.

Litigious, in his early fifties, had an Ed
Asner head and a perpetual scowl. He raised his fern-like eyebrows
sternly at Supercilious and continued. “We have to have a weapon
against the administration.”

“
I thought,” Dr. Rhinoceroushide
said, “that we should let a towel-head handle the negotiations.”
The towel-heads were the doctors from India, Afghanistan, Iran,
Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the
countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Rhinoceroushide was also
including Asian and African doctors in the blanket name of
towel-heads) that had sacrificed everything to come to America and
get rich. Here, they worked hard and devoted their lives to the art
of healing people to get rich. But they ended up at Saint Jude’s
because most white graduates from medical schools did not want to
live in places like Lansing. The towel-heads took on positions that
the other doctors did not want to do without complaint and for this
they were looked down upon. While invited to the morning breakfast
conference, they snubbed it simply because they ate breakfast
before their shift began.

“
Fucking towel-heads,” Dr. Callous
said, chewing his apple fritter. Then one of the directors walked
into the conference room. “Crapper,” Callous sneered.

Chapter 2

Fred Crapper bounced into the doctors’
conference room engrossed in the notes written to himself by his
secretary. He looked up from them and saw the doctors looking at
him with mouths full of donuts. Crapper was the head of the Central
Supply Department and, at the moment, lost. Crapper was more than
his name; it was the way he lived his life. The only interesting
thing about him was that he bore a close resemblance to Richard
Gere. So much so that many women and quite a large number of men in
the hospital had a crush on him. It wasn’t so much that he was a
twin of the actor, but that he had a quiet handsomeness, a full
head of gray hair, and a habit of wearing silk shirts.

“
Crapper,” Dr. Callous sneered.
“Get out of here.”

“
T-Talk to you g-guys later.”
Crapper stumbled out of the room and hurried down the hall. The
thing most unlike Richard Gere, and therefore it kept him from
getting laid, was his stutter. But he did not have time to get laid
or to chat with the doctors because his job as a director was very
important. It was the directors’ job to meet regularly. They took
their meetings very seriously and met often and had their meetings
catered by the Food Service Department. They often spent hours
working out when they were going to meet and where. They spent
entire meetings congratulating themselves on meeting so often. Then
they would schedule a special meeting to work out a way that they
could meet less and devote more time to other things that they
would never do. Today the meeting would be to work out how they
were going to save their asses.

Crapper went to the Presidential Executive
Suite to follow the hospital’s administrator to the meeting. Jonas
Grumby, the hospital’s CEO was in his office deciding on the
outcome of brainstorming that his directors will be doing in their
meeting. While his employees attended to their daily routine like
school bullies repeating the third grade- some floundered in
circles in their part of the hospital and others meandered down the
hallways; Mr. Grumby conspired against them. Not intentionally
(this time), but he was about to begin a reorganization of the
hospital that did not need to be an attack on the employees, but
would be.

“
Is that Mr. Crapper waiting
outside there?” Grumby asked his secretary as she came into his
large office. Grumby leaned back in his dark leather chair and
smoothed his white hair with his chubby fingers. He combed his hair
straight back; it was still full, but slowly moving away from his
forehead to the point that his hairline began at his ears. Grumby
was tall, about three hundred pounds and prone to wear a captain’s
cap.

“
Yes, sir. He looks a little
lost.”

“
That’s my little buddy.” Then
without moving in his chair, he turned and addressed the new
executive not yet assigned to a specific position, but hired by the
board of trustees to be trained by Grumby personally. “Mr. Petty, I
would like you to come with me to the meeting with the department
directors. I know this is your first day, so I don’t even expect
you to be able to take everything in. But we have some important
decisions to make.”

“
Absolutely,” William Petty said.
He sat with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms behind his
head so that his expensive suit fell open and revealed the
suspenders he wore just like the lawyers on soap operas. In spite
of the smaller chair that he sat in, he looked more like a CEO than
Grumby who looked more like the president of a welders’ union.
Petty was thirty-seven with short black hair and big dull eyes that
he always made eye contact with. “What decisions, Mr.
Grumby?”

“
Well, actually, the decisions
that the board of trustees have already made.” Grumby leaned
forward and folded his hands on top of his desk. “Obamacare is
forcing us to change with its possible of less revenue. Research
has shown that we believe it will. What I need to do is get the
directors to come up with the idea of hiring a consulting firm to
stream-line our hospital, and run with it because they are going to
have it rammed down their throats anyway.”

Petty leaned forward. “Do we tell them that
they are going to have it rammed down their throats?”

“
They know.”

Grumby motioned Petty to come closer. “You
see, the board of trustees is the governing body of Saint Jude’s,
right? They are the direct supervisors of the departmental
directors, which are overseen by me. I answer only to the regional
president of our parent company, The Sisters of the Sorrowful
State. The regional president reports to the board of trustees of
whom he is a member.”

Petty nodded his head. “Ah, so this assures
that the trustees are able to keep close tabs on Saint
Jude’s.”

“
Uh-huh. Unless something goes
wrong,” Petty whispered. “Then the hierarchy assures that the
trustees can’t be held accountable.”

“
Wow.”

“
The Board of Trustees consists of
three devoted and parsimonious nuns and six very knowledgeable and
greedy doctors,” Grumby went on with a wink in his voice. “They
have originated an innovative plan that every other hospital has
done. When and I mean if Obamacare hobbles us, we need to have
already carried out our plan. This consists of having an
independent efficiency consulting company study the hospital and
make recommendations on how to make us more cost-effective.” Grumby
looked from one side of his office to the other. “There are
operatives from The Company here in the hospital
already.”