Bad Case of Loving You

“Okay, a reasonable point. One of the renal consultants couldn’t get the thoracic surgical team to assess one of his patients. They claimed they didn’t have space on their list to even consider it. So, after talking to his patient so she knew what he was doing, he changed her diagnosis to malignant tumours. Surgical team saw her instantly and complained bitterly about the consultant bypassing the system. The admin wants to discipline the doctor; we want the BMA in on it because the doctor was just doing his job in the best way he could.”

The students all stared at me, and I felt guilty for disillusioning them. “Who can tell me what the underlying issues are?”

Nevins was off in sexual fantasy heaven and I felt like grabbing him, shaking him, and shouting, “Do you think you’re the only one here that had sex last night? The rest of us are managing to concentrate!”

I waited.

Lin said, “The primary objective is patient care. If it takes deception to manipulate the bureaucracy and get that, what’s the problem?”

I waited, and said, “And?”

Blank looks.

“What about the surgical team?” I asked.

“By the first doctor misleading them and forcing them to divert resources that they couldn’t spare, it decreases their ability to provide care to their patients,” Lin said.

“And?”

Lin looked puzzled, and it was Nevins who looked up and said, “It says something about the hospital if it is that short of resources.”

I was stunned. Obviously a degree of critical thinking had been imparted by osmosis.

“Absolutely,” I said. “What occupancy rate does the hospital run at?”

It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t actually expect anyone to know.

“104%,” I said. “Yes, we manage to consistently run at significantly over capacity. If you ever meet Rina, the bed manager, ask her about it. She describes it as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.”

“How?” Blake asked. “How does the hospital fill 104% of its beds?”

What the hell, it didn’t look like we were ever going to manage to do rounds today, so I might as well show them.

“Let’s go. Come and have a look at the dark underbelly of the hospital, see how many people can be packed into Casualty on a bad day.”

* * *

F was in the cafeteria at lunchtime and I took my burger over to join him. He was looking far more cheerful than I had expected from someone who’d had a new one ripped at an early morning meeting.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Fucking awful,” he said brightly. “But that’s all right. I typed up a letter of resignation and left it in the printer

’accidentally’ for a minute or two. That should help things.”

“I made my med students think about your problem. Then I took them to Casualty.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Did it help?”

I shrugged. “Fuck knows.”

He smiled knowingly. “I looked it up. I’m impressed.”

“So was I,” I said.

Chapter Eleven

The meeting was mind-boggling. I sat down the back with Lin and watched in amazement as the Powers That Be went head to head with a bunch of angry doctors. There had been shouting, heated discussion of the standard employment contract the hospital used, and threats of industrial action.

Lin and I sat in rapt silence through this, though I must admit that I kept my eyes on Andrew most of the time. He was so passionate, speaking at one point about the obligations of practicing medicine, and the hospital’s abrogation of its duty of care, and I tried to reconcile this aspect of him with what I’d seen the night before. What he’d let me do. How good it had been.

Lin nudged me at one point, while Andrew was talking, and whispered, “You’ve got it bad for him, haven’t you?”

“Guess so,” I whispered back.

Fuck, I’d been so sure it had been a one-night stand; that we’d just fuck and that would be it, and I couldn’t quite believe that he’d asked me over for dinner, and that he was happy for me to study at his place. That implied something I hadn’t really had a chance to think about. Was it possible he wanted a relationship? That would explain him lending me his shirt, leaving me to let myself out of his house.

He was shouting now, standing up beside the doctor who had lied about his patient, the same man I’d seen him talking to in the bar the night before. I thought of what we’d seen that morning, where he’d taken us in the hospital. I guess at an intellectual level I’d known that parts of the National Health were in that bad a state, but it was a shock to actually see it.

It made me want to shout, too, and those patients weren’t my patients yet. They would be soon, either here or in another hospital, and I wasn’t sure how I’d cope.

The BMA lawyer interrupted one of the hospital’s lawyers and said, “This is at an impasse. I suggest we stop now, we’re not making headway.”

The doctor that had precipitated this mess, the one who looked like he was Andrew’s friend, stood up and called out,

“Drinks are on me, ten minutes, in the bar over the road.”

Andrew slapped him on the back and pushed his way through the doctors who were all standing up, talking at the top of their voices.