The Tao of Apathy (17 page)

“
Thank you Uncle Mr.
Seuss.”

Bigger stumbled out of Seuss’s office, dazed
at the choice he faced. Jan whispered his name and motioned to him.
“Look, I got to tell you. Greg got that poem from me and he didn’t
really get the point of it. That man doesn’t take a hint or notice
a proposition--anyway, Bigger, that poem is by Douglas
Malloch.”

“
Oh. Thank you.” Bigger turned to
go.

“
Bigger, quit being so stupid.
What the poem is about is being the best at who you are. You are
not a scrub, but if you were, so what? Who says you have to have a
good job or get married or have three children like your sister?
Who? Huh? Who? Is a husband and children any more fulfilling than a
platonic eleven year friendship with your boss?”
“Ah, I’m going now.”

Chapter 33

Doctor Coxcombry took a big gulp of his coffee
at the daily am. doctors’ meeting. “Dr. Priggish, let’s have that
ghost guy in white fired. He scares the bejesus out of
me.”

Priggish dabbed the side of his chocolate
covered lips. “You can’t just fire him; he has been haunting this
place for a hundred years. You just want to do something mean
because the staff is forming a union.”

“
Damn right,” Dr. Rhinoceroushide
sneered. “My staff is already starting to believe that I can’t just
treat them however I want. Just the other day, I asked a nurse to
pick a piece of corn out of my teeth and do you know what she said?
She said, ‘No, I am a nurse that only needs to perform my
professional duties, not your mother.”

“
Have her fired,” Dr. Litigious
said.

“
Fucking towel heads,” Callous
called out.

Dr. Supercilious sliced his cheese and bacon
omelet with his fork. “Your mother has been dead for ten years. How
could you confuse a nurse with your mom?”

Dr. Priggish strolled over to the window with
his cup of coffee. He looked out the window and then said something
that the would-be union members themselves thought. “There will be
no union. The hourly employees cannot change things. We’re doctors
and look at the conditions we have to work in. Petty and those nuns
are shrewd, strong people and will never cave.”

Chapter 34

“
We are going to give you
everything you asked for,” the CEO of Lansing’s Saint Jude’s
Hospital and Medical Center said firmly as he slid a proposal
towards them. The seven union representatives respectfully laughed
at him with glee.

“
Yes,” Dan yelled out, throwing
his arms in the air and jumping like a cheerleader.

Susan stepped forward and began to read the
outline of the concessions that Petty and The Board of Trustees
were willing to give.

“
The only condition is that we
formalize this within the week and I get to formally announce this
two weeks from today,” Petty threw out casually.

“
This,” Susan told the rest,
“lists the conditions we asked for on layoffs as well as the
raises. Wow. This also lists a lot of things that we weren’t even
asking for. They are going to give nurses higher on-call pay. They
are going to give the techs less 12 hours sifts. They are going to
allow more maintenance men to take off for deer hunting. It goes
on.”

Betty leaned over and looked at the monthly
planner on Petty’s desk. “Your announcement would be the day before
the vote on the union. This is your way of killing the
union.”

Susan addressed Mr. Petty. “We have a right
and a need for a union. We should stand up and empower our rights
as employees.

Susan glanced at the other representatives.
“Do you see what he has in front of us? Something to placate almost
every employee. If we don’t take the deal, the others will be
torqued at us while Petty looks like the hero. If we take the deal,
Petty still looks like he brought the beer to the party. Meanwhile,
everyone is happy and stops seeing the need for the
union.”

Betty pursed her lips. “This doesn’t sound
legal.”

“
Close enough for governmental
purposes.” Petty rejoined.

Susan looked around Dan to Betty. “I don’t see
what else we could do. We have to take the deal and hope the
employees stand on their principles.”

Dan, using his most respectful voice, said,
“Mr. Petty, thank you for these incentives. I apologize for winning
like this, but we are going to take your deal.”

Now Petty laughed. “Yes. Betty, take some
notes so that we can draw up an agreement. Please identify yourself
in the agreement as the new Female Employees Advocate.

“
Petty, I used my position as your
secretary to get information to use against you and you still want
to give me that promotion? I figured that if the union failed, I’d
be out on my waffled ass.”

Petty shrugged and smirked. “Honey, I won. We
all won here. But mostly it was me that won. Even the fact that
women with pending and future lawsuits will see a girl from the
secretary staff become someone that handles their complaints will
be a very positive thing for me.”

Betty looked at her boss, who had just nodded
and winked at her. She had always taken the way she had been
treated by her bosses in stride. It was why the Board of Trustees
had transferred her in to work for Grumby and she had taken pride
in the fact that she was a tough old bird that could be counted on
to handle anything. But she had found herself being one of the
first ones speaking out at the initial informational meeting for
the union. Then she had found herself being listened to and looked
to for clear thinking at each meeting. Looking at Petty gloat, she
realized that the something that had motivated her to even go to
the union meetings was a desire for self-respect. That and
hatred.

“
Forget it, honey. We present this
proposal and the union doesn’t have a chance.” She looked over at
her other representatives. “He’ll still present his proposal, but I
don’t think we should agree to do it for him. Don’t you see how
much better it will sound from us than from him?

“
We should give him back his
proposal and say no thank you.”

The rest shook their heads. Dan looked at her
tenderly. “Someday, Betty, you are going to have to trust people.
True Petty and Grumby have done some insensitive, criminal things,
but we have brought it to their attention and Petty is correcting
it. And he has the right to do that. I can take this offer to the
employees with a clear conscience. Personally, I think the people I
work with have more integrity. They will accept these things, which
we have coming and will still vote for the union. But we need to
forgive. We need to not hold a grudge.”

“
Whatever, France. But I know this
means the union will not go through. And if the union is not here
to make him (she pointed to Petty) honest,” she stood up, “then I
quit.”

Everyone including Petty turned to her and
said, “What?”

“
You heard me. I’m not doing it
anymore.” Betty’s legs turned to carry her out, but she stopped and
looked at Petty. His face transformed into the faces of the
different bosses she worked for over the years. “I have been a
secretary for twenty-three years,” she told him. “For a long time,
I served coffee and let the male executives call me girl. A good
girl. Finally, I told them that they were sexist and I felt
demeaned. That was the one time I ever complained and I guess I was
too meek about it because they thought it was cute. Grumby even got
away with making harassing comments and touches to his secretary to
make her quit. His only punishment was that the nuns hired an old
bag like me so that he wouldn’t be tempted. But he didn’t care that
I wasn’t young and thin and vulnerable because his thoughts never
went beyond his own desire to be touched where even his girlfriend
wouldn’t go. But no matter what, I tried to remain professional,
while the professionals around me had temper tantrums, leered and
basically just acted like two-year-olds. That’s what got me into
the union and you are no different, Mr. Petty. You can’t think of
anyone, but yourself. The thing that gets me is that you do it in
the name of helping people.”

Betty then turned toward her friends. “When
you find out you gained nothing, don’t quit like I’m doing. Go on
working here, knowing that things are unfair, but that all in all
it could be worse. Petty here believes he is doing what’s best for
everyone, but he can’t see past his Rush Limbaugh tie.”

Chapter 35

“
I love that fucking towel-head,”
Dr. Callous spit out at an emergency lunch meeting of the doctors.
“Did you ever see him negotiate? He’s Johnnie Cochran in a turban.
If the peons of this place can get all those extras, then Zamboli
ought to be able to make it Christmas for us.”

Dr. Coxcombry slammed down the phone and
looked at his colleagues, striking the pensive, concerned pose he
usually reserved for his Reagan Democrat patients. “I just got off
the phone with Zamboli’s nurse.”

“
Hey, zip up, then,
Coxcombry.”

“
No, she just told me that Zamboli
is backing out of doing the negotiations. Something about a patient
needing emergency surgery.”

“
That fucking
towel-head.”

“
Do we need him?” Supercilious
asked. “What can he do that we can’t?”

“
In your case, cure sick people,”
Rhinoceroushide explained with clenched teeth. “That’s why he works
in surgery and you work in Immediate Care. He is a surgeon who
performs groundbreaking procedures that are written in medical
journals, while you are a floodgate so that we don’t accidentally
send somebody home that might die. Because really, your patients
are just marking time until their own body gets over being
sick.”

Supercilious beamed. “I know. I get awards
from the HMO.”

“
Listen you assholes,” Dr. Callous
interrupted. “This is our one chance to get that special doctors'
elevator with an attendant that we need. So let’s not fuck it
up.”

“
I’ll go,” Dr. Litigious said. “I
just need to reschedule a double organ transplant.”

Supercilious laughed. “Yeah, that guy’s not
going anywhere, anyway.”

Litigious sat on the corner of Petty’s desk
mouthing an unlit cigar. “Well, Bill, I know you are busy with the
union and all that, so I’ll just run down what the doctors want and
then let you get going on the details. Our negotiations usually
went pretty quick with the last guy that sat there.”

Petty gave a quick nod and turned the cigar
Dr. Litigious had just given him in his mouth.

“
You might want to write this down
so you don’t forget anything.

“
Oookay. We want a twenty percent
raise in our revenue; a doctor’s parking lot to be located inside
the hospital so that we won’t have to be subjected to bad weather.
We want the power of approval on research projects; major equipment
purchases and color scheme of any remodeling to be done. I am
confident you find this agreeable.”

Petty leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry, my
friend. But we have to start looking at this hospital as a
business. We can no longer lavish you doctors with high pay and
perks. No deal.”

“
Huh?” Litigious jammed his cigar
into the pocket of his suit jacket. “Let’s get real serious, real
quick, here. We are not asking for anything that we couldn’t get if
we went to a bigger hospital.”

Petty scoffed. “Yeah, you guys could go
anywhere with your talents, but you chose Lansing, Michigan for the
nightlife. Personally, I’d love to give you those senseless perks,
but we have to start looking at our bottom line.”

“
But but but but, we’re
doctors.”

“
Big deal. Things have changed.
Now if you were the president of a HMO, then I’d listen. But I
consider you an assembly line worker just like the nurses, aides,
technicians, blah, blah, blah. You will take what I give you and
like it. Your job,” he said pointing towards his door, “is to crank
out as many patients as you can. You have a quota to fill fella.
Now get back on the line.”

Dr. Litigious withered off Petty’s desk. He
found himself having to sit down in a chair.

Then he recovered. “Okay,” he said, letting
Petty smile. “Okay, sir,” he said which sent Petty into a grandma’s
teeth just fell out laugh. Litigious stood up and reached for the
door. “One more thing, though, if I may?”

“
You may go ahead.” Petty leaned
forward, recollected himself, and touched his fingers
together.

“
I think now might be a good time
to tell you that we were approached by a new health care
organization that wants to come into the area and give St. Jude’s
some competition. They have asked all of us doctors to consider
working under their system. I think you just made our decision a
lot easier.” Litigious turned the doorknob.

“
Wait. Dr. Litigious. You guys
can’t. We have been here for a hundred and thirty years and have a
strong history in this community. Where is your sense of
loyalty?”