Preview of Coming Attractions

Hey all, I’m working on novel, and I’m going to publish it serially here (until Michael revokes my posting privileges).  It is a dark comedy, partly autobiographical about a few days I spent in an Italian hospital many years ago.  I have one short chapter ready to go.  The thing is, it’s not the first chapter.  This is the teaser-trailer, to see if anyone’s interested in following my wacky misadventures in socialist health care.

* Note: Peter is an American student who was taken to the emergency room in an Italian hospital with severe, stabbing pains in his stomach.  For some reason, they put him in the eye ward.  This is his second night at the hospital, and so far his experience has been marked by one absurd situation after another *

The Unhelper

Peter woke up in pain.  Screaming, searing pain ripping through his gut.  He curled forward in a bit of a sit-up, hoping for relief, but none came.  Stab, stab, stab, from the right side of his liver to his spleen.  His face dripped sweat, and his pillow was soaked through.  

As soon as he came to his senses enough, he pushed the button the doctors gave him for a morphine dose, but nothing came.  No flood of delicious relief, straight into his blood stream.  Just pain, pain, pain, pulsing erratically, like electrical fire twisting his organs into knots.

He reached for his second life-line, a nylon cord attached to a bell that would summon the nurses.  No sound came.  Ah, they must have disabled it after all the ringing last night.  He curled up into a tighter ball, and tugged on the nylon cord a few more times, just in case.  Still nothing.  

The rest of the room was totally silent, except for a faint buzz from another room.  The other patients weren’t even snoring.  Other than the white, cotton patches covering one or both of their eyes, they could have been any group of old people sleeping in a large common room.  Maybe they all had morphine.  None of them could help Peter.  

Well there was nothing for it.  Staying put simply wasn’t possible, so Peter gingerly swung his bare feet to the freezing marble floor.  How the Italians managed to invent the aqueduct and the Renaissance, but not figure out the concept of carpet, he would never know.  But now he was standing, a little bent forward, feet rapidly losing all feeling, and ready to venture out.  He grabbed the IV bag stand and wheeled it toward the door.

Outside of the eye ward was a long hallway that was probably intended to be white, stretching long and empty in either direction.  There were no signs.  There were no lights, no sounds, nothing at all to suggest which direction might lead to help quicker.  Stab!  Okay, standing here wasn’t going to get anything done.  Peter turned left and started shuffling along the icy stone floor.

As it happened, Peter soon came to a reception area, which he vaguely recalled from when he was brought here two days ago.  The area was empty, and there were no nuns behind the reception desk to help, or at least tell him where to find help.  Just a dim, distant buzzing sound, like the hum of mechanical equipment off in the distance.  Nothing for it but to continue down the hall.  But as he was about to start shuffling again, he saw that there was a little alcove tucked behind  and to the right of the reception desk, and a dim light coming from the alcove.  He crossed the reception area, and what looked like a second, smaller reception desk came into view.  And — sweet mercy! — there was a woman sitting at the desk, reading a novel.  Above this second desk, he saw a wooden board, hanging from thin chain, which was etched with the words “The Unhelper.”

“Excuse me, miss …”  The sound of Peter’s cracked voice in his dry throat surprised them both.  “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m in a lot of pain, and my morphine drip isn’t working anymore…”

The young woman smiled.  It was a smile of pity.  But it was the wrong kind of pity — much more “ah, you seem to be mistaken about something” and much less “you poor dear, let me help you.”  She lowered her book a little, smiled again, and said sweetly, “I’m sorry, this is the Unhelper desk.  You’re going to have to wait for one of the nurses tomorrow morning.”

“But I’m in a lot of pain, and I really ….”

The smile faded a little.  The young woman realized she was dealing with a dimwit.  The book lowered a little more.  It looked like a romance novel, complete with tacky front-cover art featuring a pirate and his soon-to-be-ravaged lover staring desperately into one another’s eyes.  “I’m sorry that you don’t understand, sir.  I’m not a nurse, I’m the Unhelper.  I’m not allowed to deal with your morphine drip; that would get us both in a lot of trouble.  You’re just going to have to wait for one of the nurses.”

“What’s an Unhelper?”

“Not what, who.  Specifically, me.  I’m an Unhelper.”  The smile was still flickering there, but just barely, like a match burned nearly to the end and ready to wink out at any moment.  “Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Nothing’s wrong with my eyes.  I’m here for my stomach.”

“But you’re in the eye ward.”

“I know that.  So what do you do, as an Unhelper?”

“They don’t have Unhelpers in America?  That’s strange.”

“Not that I know of.  I’ve never heard of an Unhelper.  But look, I’m an art student, not a med student.  So it’s totally possible that …”  Another electric stab in the liver cut off the rest of Peter’s sentence.

“As you probably know, it has been proven scientifically and mathematically that government workers are highly inefficient at helping people.  So in order to improve hospital efficiency, we dedicate twenty percent of our staff to not helping people.  That’s an automatic twenty percent increase of efficiency, which means we can pass the benefit on the you, the customer.”  Now her smile was back in full force, gleaming white and sweet and coldly logical.

“But I … that doesn’t really …”

Now she put the book face down on the table, next to a thin vase with a dead flower.  One frail leaf barely clung to the desiccated stem.  It was clear that dealing with Peter would require her full attention.  

“Listen, sir, it’s the rule.  You can’t argue with the rules.  More importantly, you can’t argue with math.  One hundred percent inefficiency minus twenty percent inefficiency equals only eighty percent inefficiency.  In concept, that saves the government millions of dollars every year.  Even Americans should be able to understand and appreciate that.”  She looked fixedly at Peter to see whether he understood and would now shuffle away, leaving her in peace.  She wanted to pick up her book, but didn’t want to have to put it down again if he had to ask any more stupid questions.

“Then, uh, I guess I don’t understand why you’re here.  What’s the point of having someone in the hospital who is specifically told not to help people?”

“Not just told.  I’m also trained and certified.”

“Uh, yeah, that too.  I mean, what are you doing here?”

The Unhelper straightened her little white hat, and smoothed down her starched white shirt, both of which looked suspiciously like parts of a nurse’s uniform.  Her fingernails were long, and polished and perfect.  “Look, try to see things from my perspective, okay?  I graduated from nursing school three months before the put in the Unhelper policy.  That wasn’t my fault, was it?  I went to school so I could be a nurse, I got a job, and suddenly the hospital doesn’t need twenty percent of its staff.  That wasn’t my fault, either.  So it wouldn’t be fair to fire me for something that wasn’t my fault at all, now would it?  Of course not.  So I got some training and certification in the hospital’s Unhelper program, and now I’m fully licensed.”

Peter just stared.  The Unhelper didn’t seem to notice the look on his face.  She was now fully in the zone of explaining the impeccable logic behind the Unhelper training and certification program, and Peter was a secondary concern.  “It all makes sense, you see?  We’re improving government efficiency by twenty percent, which means we have twenty percent of our annual operating budget to fund half of the Unhelper training and certification program, with the other half funded by a government grant.  And since no one is laid off or fired, the Unhelper training and certification program doesn’t contribute to unemployment.  If we simply laid off twenty percent of the hospital staff, the employment rate would drop, and that could damage public confidence in the government.”

Now she looked at Peter steadily, trying to gauge whether any of this had sunk in, or whether he was a completely hopeless case.  She had a hard time determining whether his grimace of pain reflected comprehension or incomprehension.

“Please, miss, that all sounds great, but I really need help.”

“I understand, sir, and you’ll get help when one of the nurses gets here.  Besides, you wouldn’t want someone who’s trained in not helping people to help you.  That wouldn’t make any sense at all, and I assure you I take my job very seriously.  You want someone who is trained in helping people, not someone who is trained in not helping people.  It’s much more efficient that way.”

“Didn’t you say you graduated from nursing school?”

“Yes, I did.”

After a short pause, the Unhelper picked up her book.  Peter grabbed his metal IV stand and wheeled it back go his room, where he could suffer quietly in his bed.