4 reactions
ThiI walked into a doctor's office. Five years later I escaped.
I think that most of us have an inherent trust in people in certain positions – a badge, a degree, a lab coat. If a lawyer gives you advice, you take it. If a cop tells you to stop doing something, you stop. If a doctor tells you that you’re sick, you start to worry. It’s all part of the system of society. Those jobs have authority, and we are taught to respect that authority with little to no questioning. For the most part, this is fine – if the person really is a lawyer, a cop, or a doctor. Significant damage can be done when someone either pretends to hold this power…or uses it for less than noble reasons.
I had never considered this (aside from the tragic and horrific stories of real abuse of police power). When was the last time you heard a story about a fake medical office? I should have checked the place out. But, in my defense, I had a high fever, a very sore throat, and it was 2 am.
I was going to go to the ER. I actually drove there and walked inside, but I saw the waiting room was packed. Dozens of people with varying degrees of illness or injury took up every chair and spilled onto the floor, waiting for a bed to open up in the back. I knew this would take hours. I did not want to wait all night long for the expected diagnosis of strep. I have had it many times, so I know what it is when I get it. A quick prescription of antibiotics was all I needed. So, I left the emergency room feeling worse than when I arrived. I did a quick map search for 24-hour urgent cares in the area and found one only a mile and a half down the road.
The practice was in a little business park and situated in a small row of connected offices. There were no other cars in the lot, so I parked in the space right in front. The window had a big, red, neon sign that said, “URGENT CARE,” the white screen-printed text on the glass front door displayed the practice name, said they were open 27 / 7, and walk-ins were welcome. Huh? 27? I thought the fever was getting to me. I shrugged it off, got out of the car, and went inside.
The door made a friendly chime as I opened it. The waiting area was completely empty, which didn’t surprise me at this time of night. There was a reception desk directly across from the door. Plexiglass shielded the border of the desk from the incoming patients. An older woman with a squat build, thick glasses, and kindly face sat behind the desk. She looked up from her computer screen as I came in, and she smiled at me.
“What are you here for?” she asked while grabbing one of the many stacked and pre-loaded clipboards sitting to the right of her keyboard.
“I need to see the doctor. I think I have strep.” I croaked at her, as my voice had become raspy, and it was difficult to speak. Her face shifted into an empathetic frown. There was a sign in sheet on the counter, several names written down along with the sign in time. These had all been crossed out, but the one right above the line I used for my name had a sign in time only twenty minutes before my arrival. She handed me the clipboard through a small window in the plexiglass, pointed to the cup of pens, and then reminded me that if I had a cough or fever to please wear one of the masks available in the box beside the pens.
I donned my mask, grabbed a pen, and sat down in the cluster of blue, hard plastic chairs in the waiting area. I was grateful for the mask. The whole place reeked of some kind of industrial strength cleaner. It seared the lining of my nostrils and made my already sore throat feel like I had swallowed bleach. I filled out the 10 pages of who-the-hell-cares-about-all-this-shit-I-just-have-strep-throat and returned it to the woman behind the glass. She took it, skimmed the pages, and told me to have a seat. I didn’t register the red flags because everything from the generic artwork and cheap plastic chairs to the stack of outdated magazines and new drug pamphlets were exactly as expected. It didn’t bother me that the forms had strange extra questions like: “Do you live alone?” and “Would you consider yourself close with family/friends?” I didn’t care why the clock on the wall wasn’t working.
The door to the patient rooms opened, and the woman from behind the desk called “LeFleur!” I looked up, slightly confused that she beckoned me back like that since there were no other patients. Maybe it was force of habit?
“You’ll be in room 3,” she said and guided me to the heavy wooden door with a silver 3 nailed into it. I went inside, flopped into the chair in the corner and waited, again, to be seen. I was getting frustrated at how long it had taken. Were there actually other people here waiting in the other rooms? If so, where were their cars? I doubted everyone would Uber. Too late to leave now, though, I thought. The countertop next to the bed had a solid layer of grime. The glass jars that would have normally contained swabs, alcohol pads, or cotton balls were empty. The longer I sat, the less faith I had in the competency of this office. I guessed they used the abrasive cleaner on the floors, but they couldn’t dust or restock the rooms?
Finally, a mousy little nurse in Scooby Doo scrubs came in and took my vitals. She wrapped a dark blue blood pressure cuff around my arm, hit the button to start the machine. When it released its python-like grip, she gave me a disapproving look. “Pressure’s a bit high. 185/92.” I wanted to say that being kept waiting for over an hour for no apparent reason was enough to elevate anyone’s blood pressure, but I feigned surprise and replied, “White coat syndrome, maybe?” She laughed, harder than she should have. It wasn’t a good joke. It was barely a joke at all. Her laugh stopped abruptly. It didn’t fade or trail off. One second, she was chuckling like it’s the funniest thing, the next she is totally silent, not even a smile remained on her face. It was jarring.
She told me to hold out a finger so she could check my glucose level, something other places hadn’t checked before (not for strep anyway). I was so thrown by the laughing that I didn’t question it. The little needle jabbed my skin, and a small droplet of blood bloomed on my fingertip. She collected it on a strip, put it in the small machine in her hand. The machine made a few beeps, and she frowned at the display. Her eyes darted at me then back to the machine.
“Is something wrong? Is my sugar high? Or…low?” I asked, unsure if high or low meant good or if both were bad.
“I think the batteries in this thing might be going. I’ll just change them out and we can try again.” She walked briskly out of the room. I am not a hypochondriac, but I must have channeled one in that moment. I started going through a hundred different diseases I might have. I whipped out my phone and tried to search for anything related to wonky blood sugar readings. I was on my third article about diabetes symptoms when she returned. The device in her hand was different now. The one before was a clunky, metal box about the size of a coaster, but this one was smaller, hardly as big as a pack of gum, roughly the size and shape of one of those old Tamagotchi toys from the 90s.
She must have seen my confusion, focusing on the thing she was holding. She looked down at the device, hesitated, frowning. She stood frozen for an almost imperceptible beat but then waved her hand airily and reassured me. “There’s a new tech that keeps moving my good glucometer. I can never find it when I need it. That was an old one before. Found this little guy while looking for the batteries.” Her smile was wide and comforting, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She stuck me again. Everything was just fine. I had not realized how tense I was until then. Every muscle relaxed. She told me to sit tight, and the doctor would be right in.
I only waited another five minutes or so before there was a light knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply, the doctor came in. He scanned my chart while standing in the open doorway. Once he was done, he took a deep breath and sat down on the rolling stool on the opposite side of the room. He had not made eye contact or even looked in my direction the whole time. He was tall, lanky – as if his limbs were ever so slightly too long for his body. The bright green of his eyes stood out from his exceptionally pale skin. His face was too bland to be considered handsome or ugly. His white lab coat was too short, and his pants were too long. In any other setting, alarm bells would have been blaring in my brain. But not here.
“So, Ms…” He checked the chart again. “Lefleur?” he asked. I nodded. “Looks like you have a fever and sore throat, correct?” I nodded again. “Okay. Simple enough. Probably strep throat. But we will take a few swabs to make sure,” he said briskly. This felt right. Back to the norm. “If it is strep, we can start you off with an antibiotic injection and a prescription for antibiotics to take in home…At home.”
The doctor’s voice was deep and soothing, utterly in contrast to his appearance and demeanor. There was something wild in his overly bright eyes and shifting in his expression – but he was the doctor. He tore open a small paper package and pulled out a cotton swab. The first time he made eye contact was as he told me to open wide. He had an eagerness to his tone, but his face was rigid, suppressing the emotion underneath. The swab poked aggressively into the back of my throat. The jab hurt and I gagged. He placed it into a slender tube and stood up. He left the room for only a moment. Why did I not realize at the time that it was too quick? The swab should take several minutes, like every other time I had been tested. He returned with a large needle and a vial of the “antibiotics.” The liquid was clear, but as he drew it into the needle, it was a cloudy, yellowish color. He had the briefest flash of a grin before cleaning the spot on my arm with the alcohol wipe. He took a beat to steady his hands. Was he nervous? Giddy? The shot burned, more than it should have. It hurt so much that I actually screamed in pain. Instead of stopping, he quickly pushed the plunger fully down to drain the rest of the injection into me while gripping my arm like a vice.
After that the details are murky. The next thing I knew, my eyes opened to nothing but white. White walls, white sheets, white floors. I was lying in a hospital bed. My body felt heavy, like the back of me had been filled with sand to weigh me down. I tried to cry out, ask someone where I was and what had happened, but, before I could get out more than a groan, a nurse bustled in, heading for the machines and I.V. bags next to me. She must not have noticed I was awake. I reached out to her while she was taking a glass vial from her pocket, and she yelped and dropped the bottle. I heard it shatter on impact with the white-tiled floor. When she regained composure, she started pressing buttons on the wall behind me and called for the doctor.
“Well, look at you! Finally, back among the living! I thought you were going to sleep forever, like Snow White,” she said, grinning at me. Wait…What? Does she mean I died? A thousand questions in my head fought to be asked first, but the winner was, “Huh?”
Her grin widened, “You had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. You were rushed here to the hospital from your doctor’s office. There were some complications while in the ambulance and you have been in a coma… For a year.”
“That’s not possible,” I argued desperately, the words slurring as they tumbled out of my mouth. I struggled against my sluggish limbs to sit up. The nurse tried to ease me back down on the pillows as the doctor came through the door. This was a different nurse, but it was the same doctor. He, too, told me about my reaction, the ambulance, all of it, sharing the story as if it were a practiced routine. There were no mirrors in the room. I didn’t have time to register that I was in the same clothes I wore to the office or that the hall outside my door was completely dark. There was a scream somewhere in the distance, and panic overtook me. I struggled to rip out the I.V. n my arm, demanded to leave. My movements were too slow, my limbs felt heavy and weak. The doctor snatched my hand away from the I.V., olding it too tightly, while making “shh” sounds. He patted my shoulder with a clumsy, forced gesture, never lessening his steel grip. The nurse surreptitiously moved to block my view of the door. The memories are clear now, but nothing was clear then. Neither of them was able to calm me with words, so the doctor injected what he called a “mild sedative” into my I.V. he drug hit me within seconds.
#entertainment
source
I think that most of us have an inherent trust in people in certain positions – a badge, a degree, a lab coat. If a lawyer gives you advice, you take it. If a cop tells you to stop doing something, you stop. If a doctor tells you that you’re sick, you start to worry. It’s all part of the system of society. Those jobs have authority, and we are taught to respect that authority with little to no questioning. For the most part, this is fine – if the person really is a lawyer, a cop, or a doctor. Significant damage can be done when someone either pretends to hold this power…or uses it for less than noble reasons.
I had never considered this (aside from the tragic and horrific stories of real abuse of police power). When was the last time you heard a story about a fake medical office? I should have checked the place out. But, in my defense, I had a high fever, a very sore throat, and it was 2 am.
I was going to go to the ER. I actually drove there and walked inside, but I saw the waiting room was packed. Dozens of people with varying degrees of illness or injury took up every chair and spilled onto the floor, waiting for a bed to open up in the back. I knew this would take hours. I did not want to wait all night long for the expected diagnosis of strep. I have had it many times, so I know what it is when I get it. A quick prescription of antibiotics was all I needed. So, I left the emergency room feeling worse than when I arrived. I did a quick map search for 24-hour urgent cares in the area and found one only a mile and a half down the road.
The practice was in a little business park and situated in a small row of connected offices. There were no other cars in the lot, so I parked in the space right in front. The window had a big, red, neon sign that said, “URGENT CARE,” the white screen-printed text on the glass front door displayed the practice name, said they were open 27 / 7, and walk-ins were welcome. Huh? 27? I thought the fever was getting to me. I shrugged it off, got out of the car, and went inside.
The door made a friendly chime as I opened it. The waiting area was completely empty, which didn’t surprise me at this time of night. There was a reception desk directly across from the door. Plexiglass shielded the border of the desk from the incoming patients. An older woman with a squat build, thick glasses, and kindly face sat behind the desk. She looked up from her computer screen as I came in, and she smiled at me.
“What are you here for?” she asked while grabbing one of the many stacked and pre-loaded clipboards sitting to the right of her keyboard.
“I need to see the doctor. I think I have strep.” I croaked at her, as my voice had become raspy, and it was difficult to speak. Her face shifted into an empathetic frown. There was a sign in sheet on the counter, several names written down along with the sign in time. These had all been crossed out, but the one right above the line I used for my name had a sign in time only twenty minutes before my arrival. She handed me the clipboard through a small window in the plexiglass, pointed to the cup of pens, and then reminded me that if I had a cough or fever to please wear one of the masks available in the box beside the pens.
I donned my mask, grabbed a pen, and sat down in the cluster of blue, hard plastic chairs in the waiting area. I was grateful for the mask. The whole place reeked of some kind of industrial strength cleaner. It seared the lining of my nostrils and made my already sore throat feel like I had swallowed bleach. I filled out the 10 pages of who-the-hell-cares-about-all-this-shit-I-just-have-strep-throat and returned it to the woman behind the glass. She took it, skimmed the pages, and told me to have a seat. I didn’t register the red flags because everything from the generic artwork and cheap plastic chairs to the stack of outdated magazines and new drug pamphlets were exactly as expected. It didn’t bother me that the forms had strange extra questions like: “Do you live alone?” and “Would you consider yourself close with family/friends?” I didn’t care why the clock on the wall wasn’t working.
The door to the patient rooms opened, and the woman from behind the desk called “LeFleur!” I looked up, slightly confused that she beckoned me back like that since there were no other patients. Maybe it was force of habit?
“You’ll be in room 3,” she said and guided me to the heavy wooden door with a silver 3 nailed into it. I went inside, flopped into the chair in the corner and waited, again, to be seen. I was getting frustrated at how long it had taken. Were there actually other people here waiting in the other rooms? If so, where were their cars? I doubted everyone would Uber. Too late to leave now, though, I thought. The countertop next to the bed had a solid layer of grime. The glass jars that would have normally contained swabs, alcohol pads, or cotton balls were empty. The longer I sat, the less faith I had in the competency of this office. I guessed they used the abrasive cleaner on the floors, but they couldn’t dust or restock the rooms?
Finally, a mousy little nurse in Scooby Doo scrubs came in and took my vitals. She wrapped a dark blue blood pressure cuff around my arm, hit the button to start the machine. When it released its python-like grip, she gave me a disapproving look. “Pressure’s a bit high. 185/92.” I wanted to say that being kept waiting for over an hour for no apparent reason was enough to elevate anyone’s blood pressure, but I feigned surprise and replied, “White coat syndrome, maybe?” She laughed, harder than she should have. It wasn’t a good joke. It was barely a joke at all. Her laugh stopped abruptly. It didn’t fade or trail off. One second, she was chuckling like it’s the funniest thing, the next she is totally silent, not even a smile remained on her face. It was jarring.
She told me to hold out a finger so she could check my glucose level, something other places hadn’t checked before (not for strep anyway). I was so thrown by the laughing that I didn’t question it. The little needle jabbed my skin, and a small droplet of blood bloomed on my fingertip. She collected it on a strip, put it in the small machine in her hand. The machine made a few beeps, and she frowned at the display. Her eyes darted at me then back to the machine.
“Is something wrong? Is my sugar high? Or…low?” I asked, unsure if high or low meant good or if both were bad.
“I think the batteries in this thing might be going. I’ll just change them out and we can try again.” She walked briskly out of the room. I am not a hypochondriac, but I must have channeled one in that moment. I started going through a hundred different diseases I might have. I whipped out my phone and tried to search for anything related to wonky blood sugar readings. I was on my third article about diabetes symptoms when she returned. The device in her hand was different now. The one before was a clunky, metal box about the size of a coaster, but this one was smaller, hardly as big as a pack of gum, roughly the size and shape of one of those old Tamagotchi toys from the 90s.
She must have seen my confusion, focusing on the thing she was holding. She looked down at the device, hesitated, frowning. She stood frozen for an almost imperceptible beat but then waved her hand airily and reassured me. “There’s a new tech that keeps moving my good glucometer. I can never find it when I need it. That was an old one before. Found this little guy while looking for the batteries.” Her smile was wide and comforting, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She stuck me again. Everything was just fine. I had not realized how tense I was until then. Every muscle relaxed. She told me to sit tight, and the doctor would be right in.
I only waited another five minutes or so before there was a light knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply, the doctor came in. He scanned my chart while standing in the open doorway. Once he was done, he took a deep breath and sat down on the rolling stool on the opposite side of the room. He had not made eye contact or even looked in my direction the whole time. He was tall, lanky – as if his limbs were ever so slightly too long for his body. The bright green of his eyes stood out from his exceptionally pale skin. His face was too bland to be considered handsome or ugly. His white lab coat was too short, and his pants were too long. In any other setting, alarm bells would have been blaring in my brain. But not here.
“So, Ms…” He checked the chart again. “Lefleur?” he asked. I nodded. “Looks like you have a fever and sore throat, correct?” I nodded again. “Okay. Simple enough. Probably strep throat. But we will take a few swabs to make sure,” he said briskly. This felt right. Back to the norm. “If it is strep, we can start you off with an antibiotic injection and a prescription for antibiotics to take in home…At home.”
The doctor’s voice was deep and soothing, utterly in contrast to his appearance and demeanor. There was something wild in his overly bright eyes and shifting in his expression – but he was the doctor. He tore open a small paper package and pulled out a cotton swab. The first time he made eye contact was as he told me to open wide. He had an eagerness to his tone, but his face was rigid, suppressing the emotion underneath. The swab poked aggressively into the back of my throat. The jab hurt and I gagged. He placed it into a slender tube and stood up. He left the room for only a moment. Why did I not realize at the time that it was too quick? The swab should take several minutes, like every other time I had been tested. He returned with a large needle and a vial of the “antibiotics.” The liquid was clear, but as he drew it into the needle, it was a cloudy, yellowish color. He had the briefest flash of a grin before cleaning the spot on my arm with the alcohol wipe. He took a beat to steady his hands. Was he nervous? Giddy? The shot burned, more than it should have. It hurt so much that I actually screamed in pain. Instead of stopping, he quickly pushed the plunger fully down to drain the rest of the injection into me while gripping my arm like a vice.
After that the details are murky. The next thing I knew, my eyes opened to nothing but white. White walls, white sheets, white floors. I was lying in a hospital bed. My body felt heavy, like the back of me had been filled with sand to weigh me down. I tried to cry out, ask someone where I was and what had happened, but, before I could get out more than a groan, a nurse bustled in, heading for the machines and I.V. bags next to me. She must not have noticed I was awake. I reached out to her while she was taking a glass vial from her pocket, and she yelped and dropped the bottle. I heard it shatter on impact with the white-tiled floor. When she regained composure, she started pressing buttons on the wall behind me and called for the doctor.
“Well, look at you! Finally, back among the living! I thought you were going to sleep forever, like Snow White,” she said, grinning at me. Wait…What? Does she mean I died? A thousand questions in my head fought to be asked first, but the winner was, “Huh?”
Her grin widened, “You had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. You were rushed here to the hospital from your doctor’s office. There were some complications while in the ambulance and you have been in a coma… For a year.”
“That’s not possible,” I argued desperately, the words slurring as they tumbled out of my mouth. I struggled against my sluggish limbs to sit up. The nurse tried to ease me back down on the pillows as the doctor came through the door. This was a different nurse, but it was the same doctor. He, too, told me about my reaction, the ambulance, all of it, sharing the story as if it were a practiced routine. There were no mirrors in the room. I didn’t have time to register that I was in the same clothes I wore to the office or that the hall outside my door was completely dark. There was a scream somewhere in the distance, and panic overtook me. I struggled to rip out the I.V. n my arm, demanded to leave. My movements were too slow, my limbs felt heavy and weak. The doctor snatched my hand away from the I.V., olding it too tightly, while making “shh” sounds. He patted my shoulder with a clumsy, forced gesture, never lessening his steel grip. The nurse surreptitiously moved to block my view of the door. The memories are clear now, but nothing was clear then. Neither of them was able to calm me with words, so the doctor injected what he called a “mild sedative” into my I.V. he drug hit me within seconds.
#entertainment
source
4
| 10,000 mlx | |
| 24 | |
| 4 |