Visiplex

Once again I skirt the closed check point, wondering if they are ever going to open it again. Hopefully not. One of the sisters behind the counter sees me coming and yells “I gotchoo!” and waves me past.

I only wait a few minutes in the waiting area before Vicki comes out for me. I call it a waiting area because it’s not really a room, it’s more of an amorphous confluence of corridors containing four elevators, two restrooms, and a number of vinyl seats . 

Vicki isn’t usually the one to fetch me, and she leads me to room number two, which isn’t my usual room. It’s larger than the rooms on either side. I wonder if this is a good omen. My magical thinking is raging out of control, which is usually a good indicator of how close  to the brink of despair I am.

S’Jon takes my vitals and asks about my bloody eye. “I did that once taking a dump,” he says. Thankfully. he doesn’t explain the mechanics of how this happened, but instead tells me the saga of how he declared bankruptcy and dropped out of medical school right as the pandemic hit. “There’s nothing like going to your parking spot and finding out they’ve repossessed your Mercedes,” he says. “It’s okay though. I eventually graduated summa cum laude. And it didn’t even mess up my credit all that bad.” 

“You probably heard about what’s happening next week,”  says Vicki.

“Is the strike actually happening?” I ask. 

5000 Providence Health Care resident nurses will be striking across the state for higher wages and better working conditions, which went from bad to abysmal during the pandemic and never improved, even as the salaries of upper management skyrocketed. God bless America.

“Dr Taggert will fill you in on what it means for you,” Vicki says.

“Do you need me to take out any CEOs?” I ask.

“Thanks, that would be great.”

S’Jon peels off the Epicord and says the wound is pretty wet, which isn’t great news. It’s a little smaller but not much. This is the last of the umbilical cord; I’m finally being cut free. Mother Taggert comes in and looks at my foot but doesn’t comment on it.

“The strike, if it happens, begins next Friday,” she says. “So I’ll see you Monday as usual, then we’ll need you to come in Thursday as well so we can take the cast off,” she says. “You might not be getting a new one for a while depending on how this all goes. Do you think you can see well enough to change your own dressings? Also I’ll need you to use that wheelchair, for real this time. We want to get you better, not worse.”

 I ask her how long the strike is expected to last and she says she doesn’t know. 

“They’re saying ten days,” Kaitlin interjects as she walks past.

“Who’s saying ten days? No one’s saying ten days,” says Vicki. I ask her if she’ll be on the picket line. “Oh definitely. We don’t have a choice.”

Taggert says that both she and Dr. Thompson will be running the hyperbaric chambers for patients who are in in the middle of their treatments. “Jenny and Sally will be there too, since they’re not RNs. But the rest of the office will be closed. Lopez will still be answering phones if anything comes up.” She sounds stressed out. They all do, aside from S’Jon. 

I say I would come in and help but I don’t want to be a scab. 

“Well you’ve probably picked up enough knowledge about wound care by now,” Taggert says, and leaves through the curtain printed with the words Peace and Caring and Be Kind to Yourself. 

Vicki expertly prepares my undercast and leaves. While I wait, I try to keep my thoughts from racing in every direction. I fully support the union but I really hope they don’t go on strike. Time for that magical thinking to really start kicking in. 

I see a flash of reddish hair through the curtain and feel a rush of hope, but it’s only Tobi going to room three. I hear her start to read the patient there a checklist of ailments. 

“Are you allergic to anything? Do you have anxiety? Arthritis? Asthma? Are you on any blood thinners? Any problems with your bowels? Have you ever had cancer? We know you’re diabetic…” The hospital claims to value privacy, then builds rooms out of curtains. 

To try to corral my thoughts, I look around the dull little room and try to see if there’s anything I haven’t really paid attention to before. I focus on the three boxes of latex-free gloves, arranged in descending size, blue wrinkled fingers poking from the slots as if reaching out for me. Above and to the right is a white clock with black numbers and the word VISIPLEX printed across its face. It was someone’s job to make up with that word, and someone else’s job to approve its use for the company and its ugly products. I find myself getting irritated by it. Why do we have to smack brand names on everything? Am I expected to see the word Visiplex and be impressed, and keep it in mind when I’m shopping around for clocks to hang on the walls of my own billion-dollar non-profit hospital system?

Next to the clock is the crucifix, featuring the ultimate shop steward himself, dangling from a plank as punishment for stoking worker dissatisfaction.

Eventually Taggert returns and puts on my second-to-last cast as Vicki assists. None of us kid around. In the next room over, Tobi is still patiently making her way through the alphabet of ailments. “Do you have thyroid issues ? Do you have any ulcers? Do you ever get urinary tract infections? Do you ever get vertigo?”

As I wait for the bus, I wonder, not for the first time, how much Taggert’s frenzied bedside manner is adding to my anxiety. She always sounds like she’s scolding me, even when she’s not. I’m tired of her screeching, tired of hospitals, tired of diabetes, tired of all of it. Though I’m nervous about the fate of my foot if the strike happens, a vacation from that place might be good for my health. It is, after all, just what the doctor ordered.