Martin realized he’d made a mistake. Denise would never be anything but professional about her work. He smiled and patted her hand, telling her he was glad she felt the way she did.
Somewhat mollified, she said, “I’ll just run and shower. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
Philips watched Denise leave, then spun to his viewing screen. In the process his eyes swept over his desk and noted something new in the chaos. Walking over he found two hospital charts and a note from Randy. The note merely told him that the rest of the X rays would be pulled the following evening. The charts were those of Katherine Collins and Ellen McCarthy.
Philips carried them over to the chair in front of the viewer, opening Collins’ first. It took only a few minutes to glean the essential information, namely: Katherine Collins was a twenty-one-year-old white female with diffuse neurological symptoms, extensively worked up by neurology without a confirmed diagnosis. In the differential diagnosis, multiple sclerosis was being considered.
Philips carefully read through the whole chart. As he got to the end he noticed that Collins’ visits and laboratory tests abruptly stopped about one month ago. Up until that time there had been increasingly frequent entries and some of the latter notes indicated that she was due back for follow-up. Apparently she never showed up.
Taking the other chart, which was considerably smaller, Philips read about Ellen McCarthy. She was a twenty-two-year-old female whose neurological history involved two seizures. She was in the process of being worked-up when her entries abruptly stopped. That was two months ago. Philips even found a note saying that the patient had been scheduled for another EEG with a sleep sequence the following week. It had never been done. Her work-up had not been completed and no differential diagnosis was listed in the chart.
Helen arrived and came in with her usual handful of problems, but before she said anything she presented Martin with a fresh cup of coffee and a doughnut she’d brought from Chock Full O’ Nuts. Then she got down to business. Ferguson had called again and said that the supplies had to be out of the room in question by noon or they were going to be out on the street. Helen paused for a response.
Martin had no idea what to do with all the equipment. The department was already crammed into a space half the size they needed. Just to be rid of the problem, even temporarily, he told Helen to bring everything into his office and stack it against the wall. He said he’d think of something by the end of the week.
Satisfied, she went on to the problem with the technicians who wanted to get married. Philips told her to let Robbing handle it. Helen patiently explained that Robbins was the one who had presented the problem to her in order to have Philips handle it.
“Damn,” said Martin. There was really no solution. It was too late to train new technicians before they left. If he fired them, they’d get new jobs easily while Philips would have trouble finding replacements. “Find out exactly how long they plan to be away,” he said trying to stifle his exasperation. He hadn’t taken a vacation himself in two years.
Turning to the next page of her notes, Helen told Philips that Cornelia Rogers from Typing had called in sick again making it the ninth day absent this month. She’d managed to be ill for at least seven days each month for the five months she’d been working for neuroradiology. Helen asked what Philips wanted to do about it.
Philips wanted to have the girl beat up, quartered, and thrown into the East River. “What would you like to do?” he asked, controlling himself.
“I think she should be given notice.”
“Fine, you handle it.”
Helen had one last comment before heading for. the door: Philips had to give a 1 P.M. lecture on the CAT scanner to the current group of medical students. She was about to leave when Philips stopped her. “Listen, do me a favor. There’s an in-patient named Lynn Anne Lucas. See that she gets scheduled this morning for a CAT scan and polytomography. If there’s any trouble, just say it’s a special request of mine. And tell the technicians to give me a call just before they do the procedures.”