This is bullshit, Thought Eve Berry.
Why am I being called into the North Wing? No one ever goes there, she thought. Eve herself had only gone in there a handful of times during her history here at MidEast Claramine... maybe just to take a quick power nap. But when she read the message earlier she had to do a double take, there was no mistaking it: she was requested by name to report to the North Wing for a new geriatric patient. This was the first red flag of her day.
She turned in towards the building and entered the revolving doorway remembering how similarly her university entrance looked. She was always an okay student in her university days, studying medicine was difficult enough, not to mention the disastrously scheduled exams and the impossible struggle to maintain a work-life-work-school balance in a new city. But after passing the Etra Exam and finally becoming a registered Level 3 Nurse, Eve was excited that she would finally be able to fulfill her lifelong passion of helping sick people. As cliche as it sounded that's the whole reason she went into medicine in the first place. At least that was what was supposed to happen to her.
Walking past the empty receptionist desk, Eve tried to think back if she had ever actually seen another soul sitting behind that desk. Her first day here there was an administrator welcoming the handful of new nurses, but that lady stood next to the desk. That should have been Eve's first clue. On paper, MidEast Claramine had an amazing Patient Outcome record. Nearly every patient that was admitted survived their respective medical procedures, in the entire province this hospital ranked number 2 out of thousands in its Discharge to Home ratio, and the reviews of previous patients made it stand out in the textbooks as a numerical miracle. It was the second hospital Eve applied to after graduating, and they got back to her faster than any of the rest with a letter of acceptance. She was stunned and thought they saw her potential, her caring, and her professionalism.
She laughed to herself when she thought about it now. That was four years ago. She would kick herself in the face and tell her past self to get the fuck out while she still could. The only reason they hired her so quickly was because they wanted her to accept the contract before any other hospital could get her. Yes, MidEast was probably the best hospital when it came to Patient Outcome records... but that was only because they didn't have any procedures done. They also didn't need to do much to get the second best Discharge to Home ratio either, because the MidEast corporation owned the Claramine Nursing Home that it was attached to. And the best part? They only accepted patients from the Nursing Home who had a medical evaluation ranking them a Class B or higher... meaning that the whole hospital was full of a handful of old people that were already senile and left in an old folks home, and were only sick enough to need a shot of nasal spray and a multivitamin. The most interesting thing that happened was that an old man swallowed his gold tooth, but that was a simple laxative and bucket situation, and Adam told the whole crew all about that fun time right before he quit for a better job.
Eve pressed the button on the metal door marked "Lockers", waited for the little light to turn green, and then entered her PIN. The electronic screen read her name, flashed twice, and unlocked with a *click*. She pushed it open and went inside, towards her locker, when she saw two younger nurses laying down on the benches, clearly having made themselves comfortable with piles of jackets and blankets. This was the usual way newcomers spend their time. They were too inexperienced to be trusted with the few patients that were actually here, so they were "on standby"... basically chilling out in whatever corner wasn't being watched by the three administrators (of which there were many).
"How is the 'busy side' of the Cardiac Staff?" Eve said sarcastically, passing them by and turning just around the corner, unlocking her dusty metal locket outside of their view.
"Oh, you know, always something to do." The young girl replied loudly without looking up from her phone, her feet were propped up on the bench and she was snuggled in her nest of blankets. "I keep telling Christina to send me to the West Wing where I can at least have something to do."
"Trust me," Eve retrieved her ugly pink scrubs and started to disrobe. "There really isn't much besides wiping old people's asses and trying to convince them they're not going to kick the bucket in a year." The West Wing was her territory, and while her days were less mundane, there was still little honor in being the designated toilet paper holder for some deaf Boomer who lost all bowel control.
"Renee just wants a reason to get off her phone, she's been texting that boy again, and maybe he finally ghosted her... again. Maybe he'll leave her with a sticky quickie this time," teased the redhead, throwing a crumpled up piece of paper at the first girl. The paper hit Renee in the head and bounced off her head.
"Fucking stop, I told you to fuck off with that!" Obviously infatuated with the boy in question, Renee's lashing out echoed off the walls and into Eve's brain, annoying her further with how the day was starting. "I'm just talking to him, we're not even like that, shut the fuck up."
"Can you two please-" she started to speak while closing the button on her pants, but the other girl piped up again.
"What makes you think Christina is going to actually let you move staff teams anyway? I've been trying to get out of Cardiac since day one and no matter which team I try to switch to, they literally always come up with a reason for why they need ten cardiac staffers. It's fucking backwards, how many heart patients have we seen in one day?" There was a silence as Eve's shoes were tied. "Fucking three, maybe." This was usually the branch of conversation most staff members at MidEast had. There was a huge amount of overstaffing which no admin was able to explain to anyone. Sometimes when asked why there were so many nurses the answer was we're expecting a lot of incoming patients from out of state, which never came. Sometime it was there was a mix-up with the applications, some of you will be transferred to another hospital, which no one ever was. And once it was something along the lines of I don't know, why, is someone planning on quitting!?
Bureaucracy is the single most annoying obstacle in any professional organization, and none had it worse than the medical field. Did Eve want to wear these disgustingly vibrant pink scrubs? No. Did she have a choice? She asked herself that as she looked in the mirror, hair tied in a tight bun in the back of her head, face mask on and digital clip board in-hand.
"But what about you?"
Eve's head spun around the corner, eyebrows furrowed. She was still thinking about why there were so many of them employed here, and how the hospital still had the money to be making this mistake. "Ha? What?"
The redhead put her phone down on her chest and looked up at Eve. "You've worked here for a while, do you think you're gonna stay here? You're super pretty so you'll probably find a hot guy and convince him to move with you. I mean what, do you have any plans on getting out?" Eve silently raised an eyebrow at her and turned away.
"If you only knew..." she said under her breath, opening the door and ignoring the annoying boos that followed her lack of an answer. Who was she kidding? She got the first shitty apartment without roommates that she could find, thankfully it was relatively close to work and it had plenty of windows for her plant collection, but it was leaky, drafty, and the alley always smelled like piss. This only made her buy more and more plants, partly to purify the air in her home, but really just so she wouldn't kill herself from boredom. She saw her friends from her first days here maybe twice a year, besides that she was stuck. There wasn't any other hospital in the town, and she couldn't save up enough to be able to move. But there had to be something...
The North Wing.
Christina was waiting for her in the doorway of where she was supposed to report, room 322, which was the second red flag of the day.
