The Clock

How is work?

Friends routinely ask this and I'm never quite sure how to answer. It's frantic, demanding, unrelentingly stressful and always in crisis mode. Do they want to know this? I doubt it, so I generally just reply that it's busy and let it go at that. I'm reminded of our restaurant kitchen which I fear - a dozen or so people running about like headless chickens, yelling and singing and cursing while they balance plates of food and sling pots and pans in a rushed metallic clatter. I enter at my own peril, dodging servers and delivery people, ducking under an outstretched arm or a butcher knife. It's like a firedrill of perpetual, panicky motion with the clock ticking away and counting down, the pressure is intense and though I'm positive there's some underlying organization, I can't see it. I search for and find my cheese knives or ramikins or garlic bread and then make a dash for the swinging door, hoping not to encounter a speeding dishwasher or busboy with an armload of glassware. It's a minefield, our kitchen, and I'm lucky to escape with my life. This is how work is - a four hour fire drill with no respite or down time and a clock ticking away with unnerving precision and a deadly time limit. We break for lunch and then do it all over again.

At the end of the day, I'm physically used up and exhausted and emotionally stretched to my very last nerve. I leave with insurance codes ricocheting through my head, breathing hard and worrying that I've forgotten something while trying to make the transition from medical practice to restaurant with care and feeding of animals in between. A few aspirin and hours later, I finally finish for the day and collapse in my own living room, mentally taking inventory of the things that need to be done at home, trying to re-organize and plan my time out, still hearing a clock ticking away the seconds and minutes and hours, unforgiving and dictating with an iron will.

I'm not sure when life turned into a race or when I realized that time is the most precious gift we receive. Despite my best efforts, the clock never stops, never runs down, never gives up. Sixty seconds can be a lifetime or a fraction of an instant depending on what we're waiting for but the one sure thing is that we never get back a single minute so it's best to use what we have wisely. I'm reminded of this daily by the elderly patients I see - these are people born in the 1920's and 1930's - they come on walkers and in wheelchairs, frail and ill, suffering the effects of cancer and heart disease, chronic and painful illnesses that sap their strength and steal their minds and memories. Some are dependent on family for transport and they have not reconciled the loss of their independence. They hear the clock too but many are waiting impatiently for their time to end. They move slowly, shuffling in bed slippers and they have weathered, parchment faces and sad eyes. Those that still speak often wonder outloud why God has not taken them or eased their pain and we have no answers. Their lives are more effort than they have left and their will to live has become too much to maintain. For them, the clock can't tick fast enough.