Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [68]
“She came in on a Code Three and by the time I got to her, she was gone. But we did everything…. What can I say?”
“You know there will be an inquiry. I’m going to have to drug test you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Are you OK?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, I’m just tired, but that’s no excuse. I take full responsibility, but I just don’t understand how I could have been so wrong. I’ve gone over and over—”
“Where is she now?”
“We’re keeping her in intensive, and I’ve called in a neurologist to do a cognitive exam first thing in the morning.”
After the doctor left his office, Franklin was surprised that something like this had not happened sooner. The doctors working down in ER were exhausted, surviving week after week on two to three hours’ sleep, working under pressure, having to make life-and-death decisions. It was almost inhuman to expect a person to go through that. Franklin understood about being tired. Everybody was tired. He himself had been exhausted for years. It seemed that all he did was careen from one catastrophe to another. If it wasn’t one damn thing, it was another: appease this one, meet with this or that group, who were bellyaching about something, threatening to walk out on strike. The entire hospital was always on the verge of some disaster.
In the past ten years, operating expenses had shot through the roof. With all the criminals and dope fiends in and out of the hospital, they were now forced to spend a fortune on security guards, then last year they had to fire seven security guards for stealing painkillers. The linen supply company had upped their prices, the garbage pickup service they used went on strike, their computer system had to be completely updated when some hackers got into the system and gained access to all their patients’ reports.
Caraway Hospital was an institution originally set up to help people, but now everything seemed intent on making it almost impossible. The insurance companies, the unions, the shyster lawyers; if they could manage to get a patient in and out of the hospital these days without getting sued or robbed, it was an accomplishment. Their emergency room was jammed with people who were now using it as their own personal clinic. Forget the hospital getting paid for their services; most patients did not have insurance, and for the ones who did, it took months and years to get full payment, and all the while his payroll had to be met. The people who could afford to pay wound up paying a small fortune for what most everybody else got for free. Of course, there were people who really could not pay. He understood that, but it was the others, the ones looking for any excuse to sue, the ones who believed they shouldn’t have to pay, that medical care was owed to them. Never mind that they were costing the system millions and forcing him to lay perfectly good workers off, leaving others underpaid and overworked.
He was vehemently opposed to the somewhat gleeful practice of the public and the government soaking the rich. Most of the rich people he knew, including himself, worked very hard for their money and were responsible for almost all the hospital’s larger donations. It was the generosity of the rich that kept it going. He did not think the rich owed everybody else a free ride; and yet, that very thing was happening at Caraway. Everybody wanted a free ride, including a lot of his staff, and if the hospital was to survive, things had to change soon or he did not hold out much hope. He worried about both the rich and the poor, about what would happen to them when the hospital was forced to close its doors for good.
Brenda buzzed him. “Your wife on three.” He closed his eyes for five seconds. He knew she was calling about the Have a Heart Charity Ball tonight. He picked up and listened to her problems about the centerpieces not being the right color.
“Yes, dear,” he said. “Yes, dear, I agree, that’s terrible.”
At that very moment a phone call was made on the q.t. from the hospital cafeteria to the lawyer Gus Shimmer.
“Gus?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s me.”
“What do you have