Street Clothes & A Smile

She walked into the front office, bypassed the waiting room and the check in counter and despite the fact that are signs everywhere with the doctor's name and credentials prominently displayed, shifted her gum to to one cheek and demanded, This Doctor So and So's office? I watched her take a long slug of Coke then leave the open can on the front counter and felt my heart drop a notch or two. Our newest nurse assistant had arrived - black scrubs, black mascara, heavy pancake makeup and red painted talons for fingernails. I wondered idly if I would be missed were I to step into the supply room and bang my head against the wall.

The day, overbooked as usual and with the computers down again, did not seem promising. With a waiting room full of patients and one in every exam room, I watched a bit stunned as the new girl stepped out for not one but two smoke breaks. With chart in hand, she called patients back - in truth, she stood at the doorway and bellowed out their first names with not so much as a smile - saying things like "She don't need no xrays, right?" The words hurt my ears and offended the language. By noon, with a blinding headache and fearing that the doctor might ask me for an evaluation of this new hire - Well, I imagined myself saying, She was here on time - I fled. The truth, that she was coarse, showed no respect for the age and experience of our largely geriatric patients, and had the personality of a shrub, would not be what he wanted to hear. She would be gone, I was reasonably sure, due to her own making, in a matter of weeks, possibly days, and the merry go round of optimistic interviews would start all over again. There seems to be no end to this sad parade of sullen ineptitude and indifference, this long and well stocked offering of entitlement-minded and inappropriate people. Could there be, I wondered, an assembly plant or factory downstate, discreetly churning out cookie cut young women with no more sense or poise or willingness to work than say a salmon mousse? Were there satellite sites specializing in right wing disconnected politicians or even a Tea Party division, mass producing the likes of Sarah Palin lookalikes and threatening to overthrow the government?

It was a silly notion but it lightened my mood and helped my frustration to fade. We can be, I reminded myself, our own worst enemies when we forget the basics. Still, I often wonder if we wouldn't hire the Devil himself if he wore street clothes and a smile.

To no one's surprise and everyone's relief, she was gone a short three weeks later, sulking out after a bitter exchange and saying not a word. The atmosphere immediately lightened and good natures were magically restored as if a dark cloud had abruptly passed. We have been here more times than I can count and have yet to learn anything but hope pushes its way through despite bad soil and lack of water and no sunlight. Surely, we think, amid all these parasites and weeds, a single flower is waiting to be discovered.