One of my least favorite things about telling people where I work is the fact that this revelation will often prompt a complete stranger to regale me with his entire medical history, often adding a few diseased family members in for dramatic effect.

Due to the recent exodus of my neighbor/friend/partner-in-crime from The Hospital workforce, I now have to make alternate travel arrangements when the Jeep goes into the shop. Something on the dash started blinking at me the other day, so I dropped it off at the dealer and asked for the free shuttle to ferry me to and from the hospital, about a mile away.

A grizzled old fellow introduced himself as Gary and declared that he and the shuttle were at my service. I filled out the little slip of paper with my name and destination.

“The big hospital, huh? What do you do there? You a nurse?”

Everyone assumes that a female who works in the hospital is a nurse.

“No, I work for project management for the operating rooms.”

“You know, I had open heart surgery – FOUR bypasses! – there back in ninety-three…”

And so it began.

“There was this nurse there, pretty little thing, probably your age – how old are you?”

“Um…”

“And she saved my life. Man, those doctors never believe you. I told her about what happened and she believed me. Doctors never do. But when I went under for that surgery – four bypasses, remember, so it was a long surgery! – I saw a light!”

He turns to me and nods emphatically.

“Um…”

“And I saw JESUS in the light! And I know how they always say in the movies that you should stay away from the light, but I couldn’t because man, it was Jesus! And he was talking to me! He told me I should light candles for sick people at the church, for all the people I know, to make them get better. So as soon as I got better I started doing it and you know what, it works! There was this buddy of mine who had cancer, and this kid down the street, and I lit candles for ‘em every day and they’re healed now! And I’m going every day for this other guy and lighting him a candle and for this one lady’s baby. Cause you know, Jesus said so and that’s what I gotta do!”

“Oh…”

“Now I know it sounds fishy, so I asked around. There’s three guys I know who had that surgery just like me, open-heart, and I asked them did they see a light. Well, one fella tells me he didn’t see a light, but he remembers hearing everything going on during his surgery, like people passing needles and knives and stuff. What do you make of that?”

“Well,” I began hesitantly, “people react to anesthesia in all kinds of ways. It’s been said that some people really do hear what happens in the OR, it just depends on the patient—“

“But what about the light?” He sounded slightly frantic.

“Anesthesia causes some people to dream, to remember everything or nothing at all. It can be different for everyone.”

“Well, these other fellas that had the surgery like me, those other two didn’t see a light neither. But I know I did and that’s why I light candles, and I know it was real ‘cause it works! I mean, those people get well, and it’s cause we do what Jesus says.” He paused. “Hey, do you know Susie Blackwell?”

“Who?”

“She’s the nurse who took care of me here in ninety-three. You know her?”

I shook my head. Ten thousand people work on this campus. About three thousand are nurses and our retention rate is hovering somewhere around negative 8 percent.

“I light a candle for her too, every time. She believed me when them doctors didn’t. You said it could happen, right, so you believe me too, don’t you?”

I nod. “Of course I do.”

“I’ll light a candle for you then too.”

I have never been so happy to see that hospital.

So I’m a week and a half late for that post title. Waaah.

I quit The Restaurant! It looks like my promotion at The Hospital is going to require my hours to be a bit more flexible, so I won’t be able to make a schedule commitment to The Restaurant anymore.

At least, that’s what I told the owners.

I caught them both at the same time on the day I wanted to give my notice. LadyOwner isn’t too bad, but BossMan is a bit of a pill. I was really looking forward to his reaction.

Red: Hey guys!

Them: Hey Red.

Red: Do you have a second?

LadyOwner: Sure. (BossMan is silent)

Red: I just wanted to let you know that I have to put in my two weeks’ notice. (BossMan turns around and walks away) I got a promotion at The Hospital and my time won’t be as flexible, so I can’t commit to shifts here.

LadyOwner: Blah blah, congratulations on the propmotion, we’ll miss you, blah blah.

He just WALKED AWAY when I was talking! How dare he rob me of my moment of triumph?! I wanted him to cry! I’m actually the last waitress standing there right now. Meghan got fired, Natalie quit last week, and one of the bartenders also has her notice in as well. That leaves one bartender and one bartender/waitress to run the joint. E is pretty pleased that now BossMan and LadyOwner will finally have to do some actual work around The Restaurant instead of sitting at the bar all night “supervising” while they drink up what little profit we make.

This is why I REALLY quit:
In lieu of crappy tips, I am now raking in some bigger bucks tutoring high school English students. The pay is better, the hours are better (6-7 a week at $60 per!), and the kids are a trip. Look for more about them on here in the future; they do some pretty nuts things. I never really wanted to be a teacher – I was always afraid I’d end up on the news with a headline like “English Teacher beats student to death with comma splices” or something of that nature. Tutoring, I am noticing, is much more pleasant. I only have three students and they actually WANT to do well, so that’s a definite plus, along with the fact that it is awfully nice to feel smarter than someone once in awhile.

The Restaurant is driving us crazy, my boyfriend and I. We’re both seriously on the verge of quitting and letting the alcoholics who own the joint fend for themselves when their underappreciated employees walk out. They promised a raise to one of E’s staff and when it didn’t show up on the paycheck… well, it went something like this:

E: Hey, BossMan, Evan’s raise didn’t show up on his paycheck this week.

BossMan: What raise? Did we talk about this?

E: Yeah, after Justin was fired and you and I agreed Evan would come on full-time here and get a raise.

BossMan: When did we decide this?

E: Two weeks ago, at the beginning of this pay period.

BossMan: Was I drinking?

E: Um, yeah, you’d had a couple beers I guess…

BossMan: Well then how do you expect me to remember THAT?

And so on.

It wouldn’t be too hard for me to walk away… I work full-time at The Hospital and actually just got a bit of a promotion at The Hospital, so I’m in decent shape, dollar-wise. For E, on the other hand, The Restaurant is his bread and butter, as it were. He comes home every night frustrated and angry, torn between the fact that he hates his job and the fact that he’s good at it and doesn’t want to let The Restaurant fail. If he walks, that place will fall apart at the seams and we all know it.

We spent a few evenings working on his resume. Managerial experience, sales experience, budget work, etc… he’s got the degree and qualifications to get out of this business that he hates, but to where? Qualifications can only get you so far when you have even one major limitation.

E is dyslexic. This is a completely foreign concept to me. I could read before kindergarten and was into chapter books in first grade, Greek and Roman mythology in second, and full-fledged novels when I was about 9. I was a pretty precocious child in that regard, nose in a book all day, under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime. Books were a world for me, an escape into which I could indulge my vivid imagination and create stories of my own. I wrote poems, songs, short stories, and still harbor the aspiration of completing the novel I’ve started about four times now.

I’ve wondered all my life how people could not like to read. I thought they were just reading the wrong things – schoolbooks only, being forced to deconstruct and write papers on things they weren’t interested in, curriculum-required reading, etc. But I just knew that if these anti-readers could find the right kind of books for their interests, they would understand.

I thought these things until I met E and watched him struggle to do what comes so easily to me, narrowing his eyes and concentrating on putting letters into words, words into sentences, turning sentences into meaning. He’s smart, he really is so smart and well-spoken, and it’s hard for me to comprehend the disconnect. And it’s harder still to know that he watches me read and understand so quickly, his self-esteem sinks a little bit because he can’t do what I can do. Not in an emasculating sense, mind you, just the same things he’s felt his whole life.

The skills and experience he has are highly marketable in various industries. I’ll say this, the man’s got people skills. He has a strong work ethic, cares about employees and customers and always puts his heart into his work – even now, when he hates the job he does and the people he works for. But the transition is scary… any business he goes into outside of The Restaurant is going to require him to write, to keep databases and send emails and so on. And he’ll struggle and fight for it, and it won’t be like the rest of us struggling to adjust or find a path in a new job. It will be ongoing, and I’m scared for him. You never like to see a person you love hurting, and his dyslexia hurts him.

I want to be there for him, to help him show off the skills he has to a prospective employer and get a job he’ll like and excel at. But I don’t want him to think he’s not good on his own. So where is the fine line between encouragement and nagging?

I have a tendency to take over, I know that. It’s kind of my job as a team leader and project coordinator, I’m supposed to direct people and keep things on track, in scope, and on schedule. But I’m going to try, for his sake, to clock out at the end of the day at The Hospital and come home to just be the girlfriend and rub his shoulders while he sits at the computer.

My best friend has up and joined the Police Academy. I was really just kidding when I bought her that “Pistol-Packin’ Mama” t-shirt at the Houston Rodeo last year. I’m so very happy for her (really) because while various life events have kept her from applying until recently, I know this has been a dream of hers for a long time.

The big bummer is the fact that homegirl will no longer be working with me at The Hospital. No more project buddy, no more lunch buddy, no more person to bug on Instant Messenger when she’s busy and I’m not. This is what I get for having only one friend.

Ah, such nostalgia – the unit secretary and resource assistant days we shared, the mutual upward move to Perioperative Services and subsequent cluelessness about our new environment. We sat through Lean Sigma Yellow Belt training and pulled off a major presentation in 2 1/2 days. We pick each other’s brains for ideas, work on project teams, and have developed a reputation as the Wonder Twin Powers. (Well, we call ourselves that. Everyone else just thinks we’re good to put on a project together, but we like to pretend we’re superheroes because we always pull it off with aplomb.)

These days are coming to an end. Of course, I still live just down the street from her, and I suspect that the corner of her couch where I always crash will develop a much more prominent dent in the shape of my butt over the months to come. Sure, we’ll still have pizza and beer nights when we do nothing but amuse ourselves with her baby’s ever-changing antics while her husband is plugged into World of Warcraft. She’ll still be my sounding board and I’ll still be hers, but it’s a sad, sad day when The Hospital loses a stellar employee and I lose my best homegirl at work.

I thought about titling this post “Apocalypse Now,” but I thought that might be a teesy bit overdramatic. After all, I contributed to this. I filled out the character reference for the Metropolitan Police Department and said all sorts of glowing and warm fuzzy things about her work ethic, determination, committment, mighty omnipotence, etc. I conveniently chose to leave out those instances of public drunkenness and expulsion from hoosier dive bars, because I know how important this is to her. (Plus, I only heard about that bounced-from-the-bar night secondhand, so I couldn’t honestly say that I KNOW that happened. Public drunkenness and a deep appreciation for PBR and Stag, this I can attest to.)

And so, in memory of a great working relationship and in honor of a continuing friendship, I have written a haiku. Mel – this is for you.

Trade blue scrubs for blue
polyester, new holster
on her Yellow Belt.