Different Circles

“Do what you need to do,” Jake told her, “but you are digging yourself and this hospital a deeper and deeper hole here. How about you just go pull that manager out of her meeting, have her come talk to us for a minute, and then we’ll go. Doesn’t that seem the easier course of action than possibly fomenting a nasty little confrontation?”

Judy sighed. “Wait here,” she said. “In the meantime, I would ask you to get dressed. You will still be leaving.”

“Understood,” Laura said, trying to keep tears of anger and frustration at bay.

Judy turned and left the triage room, shutting the door behind her.

“Madres de Dios,” Celia said, shaking her head in disbelief. “What a puta!”

“Yeah,” Jake said, putting his arm around Laura’s shoulders and pulling her into a hug. “Don’t worry hon. I will deal with this.”

“I know,” she said, a tear finally slipping down now. “I just can’t believe she talked to us like that right to our faces! I mean, we’ve had the press say some nasty things about us, but that’s their job!”

“I know,” he said again.

The two of them helped Laura put on her underwear, her pants, her sports bra, her blouse, and then her socks and shoes. Right about the time they finished the project, the door opened up and a middle-aged woman in a white lab style coat came in. Two members of the hospital security team, both male, followed her in.

“Hello,” the woman said, her eyes looking at the trio a little warily. “I’m Margaret Stowe, the manager of the L&D and Postpartum department.”

“Thank you for seeing us,” Jake said politely.

“I was told by Judy,” Margaret said, “that you are having some issues about being discharged home?”

“That’s what she told you?” Jake asked.

“She said that you do not meet the requirements for admission to a birthing suite currently and that you are refusing to leave.”

“That is an interesting take on the situation,” Celia said, shaking her head a little.

“Then you are not refusing to leave?” Margaret asked.

“No,” Jake told her. “As you can see, we are dressed and ready to go. I asked to speak with you so we could discuss the way we were spoken to and treated by your nurse Judy a few minutes ago and come up with a solution so that something like that does not happen when we return.”

Margaret’s eyes darkened a bit. “The way you were spoken to and treated?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jake said. “I don’t know if Judy dislikes us in particular or is just not a fan of the human race in general, but she clearly had an attitude about us from the moment she walked into the room and was not afraid to share her thoughts and opinions with us.”

The darkness in Margaret’s eyes got a little darker. Jake began to suspect that this was not the first such conversation that she had had regarding nurse Judy. She turned to the two security guards and told them that they could go. They went and shut the door behind them. She then turned back to Jake. “Tell me what happened, Mr. Kingsley.”

He laid it out for her. Laura, who was still fighting tears, put in a few contributions as well. Celia corroborated the story and expressed her opinion that she had never met a more unprofessional health care worker in her life.

Margaret sighed once the tale was told. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said. “I will have a word with Judy about this, of course.”

“You have your word with her,” Jake said. “That is not my concern. I understand that this is a he-said/she-said situation, that she is not going to agree with our version of events, and that you have no way to verify our story or hers. We’re not asking or expecting that she be fired or disciplined. What we are asking is that—number one—she not be the one assigned to us when we return.”

“I will absolutely see to that,” Margaret promised. “She likely will not even be on shift when you return anyway.”

“Cool,” Jake said, “but that’s only number one. Number two: I trust we will be treated with dignity and respect by whoever is assigned to us when we do return.”

“We try to treat everyone with dignity and respect,” Margaret assured them.

“A good goal that you just failed in,” Jake said. “We understand that a lot of people in this town don’t care for us. We’re rich musicians who live up on a cliff outside of town and probably have drug and sex orgies up there on a nightly basis and fly our noisy airplane over the town all the time waking people up. We corrupt America’s youth, we advocate Satanism and are trying to destroy any family value that exists. The fact that we donate heavily to a variety of town projects, school programs, and law enforcement support groups is only because we’re trying to make you like us. We get it. We’re unlikable people.”

“Nobody is saying anything like that, Mr. Kingsley,” Margaret assured him.