Текст книги "Dude, Where's my Stethoscope?"

Автор книги: Donovan Gray

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One Friday morning I was busy working in his outpatient clinic. It was nearly noon and I was getting hungry. I had just finished dictating what I hoped would be my last note before lunch when Dr. Crowe tapped me on the shoulder. I groaned inwardly when I realized he was holding a chart in each hand.

“Two patients left,” he said. “One’s new and the other’s a follow-up. Which would you prefer?”

“I’ll see the new one.”

“Okay. Come and get me when you’re done.” He passed me the chart and ambled off.

The referring physician's letter indicated the patient had an eight-week history of an itchy, red rash that hadn't responded to steroid creams and two courses of Nix. Seemed straightforward enough. I opened the door and walked into the treatment room.

There were three people inside – a man, a woman, and a baby. I estimated both adults to be in their mid-30s. The woman looked downtrodden. The man was short, stocky and unfriendly.

“We’ve been sitting here waiting for half an hour!” was his opening gambit.

“Sorry, sir. The clinic was unusually busy this morning.”

“Are you the specialist?”

“No, I’m Dr. Gray, a family medicine resident.” I extended my hand; he didn’t take it. “I’ll see you first, then Dr. Crowe will be in,” I continued.

“More delays,” he grumbled.

“Where’s your rash?” I asked.

“All over.” He peeled off his tank top to reveal a spotty, red rash covering most of his torso.

“How long have you had it?”

“Doesn’t it say in the damned letter?”

I gave up on trying to elicit any further information and proceeded to examine him. The rash looked like scabies to me, but his family physician had already treated him for that without success. I cobbled together a differential diagnosis and told him I’d return with the specialist shortly.

“Better not be long! Doctors aren’t the only people who have things to do, you know!”

I located my preceptor and reviewed the case with him.

“I’ve got an extremely prickly 34-year-old man with a two-month history of an itchy rash all over his body. He looks like a pizza with legs. His family doctor thought it was either eczema or scabies, but Betnovate ointment and two rounds of Nix haven’t helped,” I reported.

“What else is on your differential?”

“Pityriasis, contact dermatitis, vasculitis, erythema multiforme, flea bites… .”

“Let’s go see.”

“Hi, Mr. Grendel, I’m Dr. Crowe. I've been hearing about this unusual rash of yours. Would you mind taking off your shirt again so I can have a look at it?”

“How many times does a guy have to get undressed before he gets a diagnosis around here?” he carped under his breath as he wriggled out of his wife-beater. Dr. Crowe studied the dappled rash for a few minutes. He looked fascinated.

“We’ll need to do a biopsy,” he concluded. “Dr. Gray here will do the procedure. I’ll stop by and have a look when he’s finished.”

Great…  .

I earmarked a fresh lesion to excise and opened a biopsy kit. Before donning sterile gloves I took off my stethoscope and placed it on a nearby countertop so it wouldn’t get in the way.

The procedure went well. While I dictated my note at the main desk, the patient and his family packed up and left.

Approximately 10 minutes later I realized I wasn’t wearing my stethoscope. I checked my knapsack and searched the reception area. There was no sign of it.

“Could you have left it in one of the treatment rooms?” the clinic nurse asked. Of course! I went back to retrieve it. It wasn’t there. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened.

“That last patient took it,” I said.

“Who?” asked the nurse.

“The guy I did the biopsy on. Which way did he go?”

“I think I overheard him saying something to his wife about catching a bus.”

“Where do they live?”

She inspected his file. “Stoney Creek.”

“Where’s the bus stop?”

“You’re going after them? Are you out of your mind?”

“They swiped my stethoscope!”

She gave me directions.

They weren’t there. According to the schedule on the wall, their bus wasn’t due for another 45 minutes. Judging by the size of my patient’s belly, he didn’t miss too many meals. I headed for the cafeteria.

It was lunchtime and the place was packed. After a couple of minutes of searching, I spotted them eating at a table near the centre of the room. There were two large plastic bags on the floor at their feet. I circled in from behind, cleared my throat loudly and said: “Excuse me; I think you have something that’s mine.”

Mr. Grendel spun around. He didn’t look the least bit intimidated. Very bad sign.

“What did you say?”

“Hi, I’m Dr. Gray, remember? I think you may have accidentally taken my stethoscope.”

“I didn’t take any stethoscope,” he bristled.

I made another attempt to give him a graceful out.

“Sir, I think it’s possible that when you packed your things it may have ended up in one of your bags by mistake.”

He detonated. “I didn’t take your goddamn stethoscope, and I resent what you’re implying!”

Suddenly we were at the epicentre of a rapidly expanding shockwave of silence. Within a few seconds every conversation in the room had ceased. A thousand pairs of eyes locked onto us. I wasn’t wearing my name tag or my lab coat, so I’m sure half the crowd must have thought I had just escaped from the psych ward.

I glanced down at the pair of plastic bags on the floor. Several thoughts flashed through my mind. How sure was I he had stolen it? If he did steal it, which bag was it in? I had a 50 percent chance of guessing right. If I searched the wrong bag first, he’d kick up such a fuss I’d never be able to get anywhere near the second bag. How much trouble would I be in if I guessed wrong? Apology-sized trouble? Lawsuit-sized trouble? Should I just cut my losses and walk away? Just then an image of him gloating and strutting popped into my head. It was more than I could stand. I grabbed the bag closest to me and ripped it open.

I didn’t see my stethoscope, but the bag was filled to the brim with miscellaneous articles. In for a penny, in for a pound… . I started tossing the bag’s contents onto the table. A chorus of gasps rang out. Someone dashed to a nearby telephone and called security. I didn’t care anymore; I was determined to see this thing through to the bitter end. I continued hauling stuff out of the bag at a furious pace – chips, cigarettes, matches, gum, magazines, Kleenex, Pepsi, Kool-Aid, Carnation formula, diapers, baby wipes… .

My stethoscope was at the very bottom of the bag.

Fear and Loathing at 3,000 Feet

In May of 1990 I was in the final stages of my medical training. One evening a fellow resident named Raoul and I were hanging around the cafeteria at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg.

“Hey, Donovan, take a look at this,” he said, pointing to a new notice on the bulletin board. It was a sign-up sheet for a one-day skydiving course. Raoul was excited. He figured it would be the ultimate adventure. As for me, I wasn’t so sure. I’m deathly afraid of heights, so naturally I had some problems with the concept of leaping out of an airplane at an altitude of 3,000 feet. For the next two weeks, Raoul badgered me incessantly: “Come on, don’t be such a wuss! Sign up with me! It’ll be the experience of a lifetime!” Eventually I caved in and added my name to the list of thrill-seekers.

As the jump date drew nearer I began to have second thoughts. What the devil had I gotten myself into? The sign-up sheet seemed to leer at me every time I walked by it. “Pssst! Schmendrick!” it would whisper sibilantly. “Is your life insurance policy up to date? Heh-heh-heh . . .” I was sorely tempted to scratch my name off, but pride prevented me. Would John Wayne have chickened out before The Alamo? Hell, no!

On the morning of our jump class I awoke with a colossal knot in my stomach. “Maybe we’ll get rained out,” I told myself hopefully. When I opened my curtains, brilliant sunlight streamed in. So much for divine intervention. I got dressed and phoned Raoul to see if he needed a ride to the drop zone.

“Hurro?” he mumbled. What was he doing sleeping in on the morning of our big adventure?

“Rise and shine, buddyl! Need a ride?”

“Ride?”

“To the drop zone. You know, for today’s skydiving lesson.”

“Kaff-kaff! I won’t be able to make it today, Donovan – bad cold. Kaff-kaff!”

Those were without a doubt the lamest coughs I had ever heard.

“Gee, you looked fine yesterday. When did you get this cold?” I asked suspiciously.

“Kaff-kaff! Last night. Very bad cold. Sore throat, too! Sorry, gotta go take some cough medicine! Good luck!” He hung up.

I gnashed my teeth all the way to the drop zone.

The No-Frills Jump School was located on a weedy lot 53 miles west of Farmville. It consisted of a tiny prefab trailer and one flyblown porta-potty. I counted 18 people – 16 students plus a pair of instructors named Daniel and Lucy.

“Where’s Raoul?” a colleague from the hospital inquired when I joined the group.

“Bad cold. Kaff-kaff!” I replied.

Daniel overheard our exchange and smiled knowingly.

“You’d be surprised how often that happens,” he said. He then turned to Lucy and asked, “Where’s Fudge?”

“I think he’s sleeping in the back of the trailer again.”

“We should probably start. Would you mind waking him up?” Daniel blew a whistle to get our attention. “Okay troops, gather round! Fudge is going to be your primary instructor today. He’ll be starting shortly. He’s a Class One Skydiver with more than 2,000 jumps under his belt. Pay close attention to what he says – your lives may depend on it!”

Just then the trailer’s side door creaked open. We all turned to get our first glimpse of the man upon whom our lives would depend.

Fudge was a squat, 30-something fellow with a thatch of matted brown hair and a seedy-looking five o’clock shadow. He was wearing wraparound mirror shades, a tie-dyed T-shirt, fraying shorts and flip-flops. He looked vaguely disoriented. Several seconds elapsed, during which he gazed up at the sky while absentmindedly scratching an armpit. Finally he opened his mouth to speak.

“What day is it?”

Despite our initial misgivings, Fudge turned out to be an excellent instructor. He spent the first couple of hours teaching us the basic rules of skydiving. Among other things, we learned that since we were beginners our canopies would be rigged to automatically deploy a few seconds after we exited the plane. All we had to do was relax and enjoy the ride. Once we got closer to the ground one of the instructors would communicate with us via walkie-talkie to help us steer the parachute safely into the landing area. The whole thing sounded preposterously easy. I began to wonder why I had allowed myself to get so worked up about it. I should have done this a long time ago! Maybe I should look into bungee jumping, too… . Fudge interrupted my ambitious daydream.

“Hey, Gray, wake up. Now for the fun part, everyone! I’m going to tell you about everything that can go wrong while you’re in the air.” Uh-oh. “Here’s an example,” he continued. “Every now and then some poor fool gets tangled in the lines of his chute. When that happens, you fall faster than a cannonball. Any of you happen to remember what terminal velocity is?” My stomach lurched. I scanned my fellow jumpers. They all looked like they were about to spew. “120 miles an hour,” he said. “Pretty fast, eh? That doesn’t leave you with much time to react, so listen up!”

We listened.

An hour later the plane went up with Daniel and three very nervous-looking jumpers. The rest of us watched as the single-engine Cessna climbed to the proper altitude and levelled out over the jump zone. A tiny speck appeared in the plane’s doorway. Moments later the speck dislodged and a white parachute blossomed above it. We all cheered like hillbillies at a graduation. A few minutes later the plane circled back and the process was repeated. The third time around, however, the speck at the threshold didn’t move. We turned to Fudge.

“Choked,” was his simple explanation.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Daniel will probably give the jumper one more chance,” he replied.

Sure enough, the plane turned around and passed over the drop zone again. Despite our shouted encouragement, the jumper remained frozen in the doorway. Fudge shook his head sadly. “There’s one or two in every class.” As the plane began its descent, Fudge handed me a parachute. “Put this on,” he said. “You’re in my group, and we’re going up next.”

It was cold and noisy in the airplane. There were no seats behind the cockpit, so the other two jumpers and I sat with our backs pressed against the hull. Fudge lay on his side reading a dog-eared science fiction paperback novel. As the plane ascended, I tried to remember everything he had taught us. I couldn’t seem to recall much more than the bit about getting tangled in the suspension lines of the chute, though. Come to think of it, what were we supposed to do if that happened? Oh yeah, “cut away” the main parachute, free fall until we were no longer entangled and then activate the reserve chute. Did screaming like a schoolgirl come before, during or after those manoeuvres? Just then, one of the other jumpers nudged me with her knee. I looked up to see Fudge standing by the door.

“Door!” he yelled over the racket of the engine.

“What?” we yelled back in unison.

He threw the door open.

A tremendous roar filled the plane. I could barely hear myself think. Fudge motioned for me to approach. Although every cell in my body begged me to ignore him, I got up and walked stiffly to the doorway. He surveyed my parachute one last time and then pointed at the footpegs welded to the frame just outside the door. We had practiced standing on them earlier in the day, but that had been on terra firma. Circumstances had changed considerably since then. When I leaned out of the plane to step onto the first peg, the wind buffeted me with incredible force. Struggling for balance, I put my left foot on the peg and looked back at Fudge. He smiled broadly. Encouraged, I planted my right foot on the second peg and glanced back again. This time he gave me the A-OK sign and shouted, “Jump!”

Who, me? You have got to be kidding. I stared down at the ground. It was a billion light-years away. The farmer’s fields below were the size of postage stamps, and the roads were thinner than strands of spaghetti. Meanwhile, the howling wind continued to tear at me and screech in my ears. I looked longingly at the interior of the plane. Sanctuary. Fudge gave me the thumbs up sign and hollered again for me to jump. I didn’t budge. We stared at each other for what seemed like eons. At last he motioned for me to climb back inside. The look of disappointment on his face was unmistakable. Somehow it served to galvanize me. I sucked in a huge breath and vaulted into thin air.

If my life were a cartoon, the thought bubble above my head as I plummeted earthward would have contained nothing more than a giant exclamation mark. My first coherent memory after my frantic leap was the loud snap of the chute opening. After that, the only sounds were the muted drone of the Cessna in the distance and the occasional rustle of the canopy above me. It was strangely peaceful, drifting lazily a quarter of a mile above the prairie. It was also electrifying. I had my next jump date planned long before my feet touched the ground.

Elementary Questions

The summer I completed my medical training I landed a job as an emergency room physician at the Misericordia General Hospital in Winnipeg. One day my mother asked if I’d be willing to come to her elementary school during Career Week to speak about health care. I told her I’d be delighted.

I assumed I’d only be talking to one or two classes, but when I got there the principal apprised me I’d be addressing the entire school and escorted me to the gymnasium. It was packed with kids, all of whom were sitting on blue gym mats and chatting noisily. The principal stepped up to the podium, motioned for the students to be quiet and introduced me. I then launched into a kid-friendly description of my life as an ER doc. When I was finished, I asked if there were any questions. Two dozen hands shot up. I pointed to a boy in the centre of the crowd. He leaped to his feet.

“How old are you?” he queried.

“I’m 29.”

“What kind of car do you drive?” he continued.

“Um, a Toyota MR2.”

“Is that a sports car?”

“Yes.”

“What colour is it?”

“Dark blue.”

He grinned and sat down, apparently satisfied with my answers.

I nodded at a tiny girl in the front row who was desperately waving her hands in the air.

“Is Mrs. Gray really your mommy?” she asked.

“Yes, she is.”

“Is she nice at home?”

“Yes, she’s very nice.”

She smiled and sat down.

I pointed to a boy who was wriggling around on his mat like a worm.

“What would you like to know?” I inquired.

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

“Okay.”

He sprinted out of the gym.

I made eye contact with a girl near the back of the room. She squealed with delight and jumped up.

“I have a cat named Trixie!” she proclaimed triumphantly.

The audience went berserk.

“I have a dog named Rover!”

“I have a goldfish named Gipper!”

“We had a bird, but it died!”

“We’re getting a salamander next week!”

“My dog just had puppies!”

“QUIET PLEASE!” yelled the principal. “No more talk about pets! Does anyone have any questions about hospitals or medicine for Dr. Gray?”

Silence.

Approximately 15 seconds later a solitary hand went up.

“Yes?” I asked cautiously.

“My grandfather lives in Nova Scotia!”

Uh-oh…  .

“We went to Disney World last summer!”

“I like Donald Duck!”

“My mommy just had a baby!”

“My dad thinks our cat might be pregnant!”

“Trixie has orange fur!”

“CHILDREN, PLEASE!” screeched the principal.

It was the longest 20 minutes of my life!

Life During Wartime

What can I say about ER work? It’s exhilarating, terrifying and hilarious, all at the same time. Like a handful of other strange professions (for some reason law enforcement and stunt acting come to mind) it’s impossible to predict what you’ll end up seeing over the course of your day. The only thing you can be reasonably sure of is that at some point during each shift you’ll run into something you’ve never laid eyes on before. Sure, there are a number of common ailments that trundle through those annoying sliding doors on a regular basis, but the red neon Emergency sign out front also seems to be a magnet for the bizarre. For example, yesterday I treated a woman who had been bitten on the cheek by a horse. Hmm, a horse bite in the middle of the city. Now there’s something you don’t see every day!

The typical shift in your average urban ER is fairly busy. For starters, you generally have anywhere from 15 to 30 patients tucked under your wing at any given time. It’s a heterogeneous group populated by the “worried well” at one end of the spectrum and the seriously ill at the other. Your job as an ER doc is to figure out what’s wrong with each patient as quickly as possible and then either fix them or relay them on to someone who can. As you work through each individual’s problems you also need to keep updating your mental tally of where all your other patients are in their respective diagnostic workups. Depending on each person’s description of their symptoms, their physical findings, the results of any tests ordered, and your instinctive gut feeling, certain illnesses move up or down their list of conceivable diagnoses. Once you’ve decided on the most likely culprit you can commence treatment and begin working on disposition. Walk-ins, crawl-ins and ambulance drop-offs add new patients to the already volatile mix every few minutes. If anyone in your flock takes a sudden nosedive you need to immediately drop everything and divert your full attention to the new priority. It’s not that uncommon to be hastily summoned to the stretcher or bedside of an unfamiliar patient who is only a few heartbeats away from death. In those cases you don’t have the luxury of being able to obtain a detailed history and perform a thorough examination to help shape a logical working diagnosis. Instead you have to immediately shift into augenblick mode and initiate potentially life-altering treatments based solely on a brief gestalt impression. It's like going from zero to warp speed without even having time to buckle in.

Imagine doing all of this in a cacophonic environment full of telephones ringing, faxes printing, monitors alarming and dozens of people laughing, crying, yelling, cursing, complaining, wheezing, coughing, bleeding and vomiting. I keep picturing some poor slob in a white lab coat juggling 20 buzzing chainsaws while balancing on a tightrope suspended above a shark-infested pool. Who could resist a job like that?

The Cleanest Boy Ever

Last Wednesday the ER was a non-stop frenetic cabaret of diseases of every genre. Around 2:00 in the afternoon one of the nurses handed me a chart and said: “I think you should see this one next.” A cursory review of the triage note revealed my next patient to be a four-year-old boy named Simon who was presenting with a rash. Meh. What’s so exciting about that?

I walked into the cubicle and came face to face with Lobster Boy. This poor little tyke was P.T. Barnum sideshow material. His entire body was covered in a brilliant red, swollen rash, and he was scratching like there was no tomorrow. Each time his nails scraped across his skin, huge welts bubbled up almost immediately. I had to force myself not to gawp.

“How long has he been like this?” I asked his mother.

“It started this morning, doctor.”

“This looks like an allergic rash. Does he have any allergies that you’re aware of?”

“No.”

“Has he been in contact with anything different lately? Food, clothing, detergent, medication?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all that might have irritated his skin?”

“Not that I can think of.”

I couldn’t make sense of it. Allergic rashes as startling as this one usually have a readily identifiable precipitant. Examining him didn’t reveal any further clues. I asked his nurse to start an IV and administer some corticosteroids and antihistamines. Two hours later he was looking and feeling much better. I decided to allow him to go home on oral medications, provided his mother promised to bring him back in the morning so I could recheck him.

The next day it was his dad who accompanied him. Once again he was covered head to toe in the same horrific scarlet rash. I asked his father if he could think of anything his son might be reacting to.

“Well, I suppose he could be allergic to those magic markers he was playing with yesterday,” he speculated. “He got marker all over his body – his arms, legs, face, belly…everywhere! The rash started about an hour after that.”

“Ah, that’s probably what triggered it,” I said with satisfaction. Another mystery solved.

“I don’t really see how, though,” he continued. “He’s played with those markers lots before, and besides, the ink wasn’t on his skin for very long. The minute my wife saw what a mess he was she marched him straight up to the bathroom and washed it all off.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Perhaps it’s not the markers, then. Could it be the soap she used that irritated his skin?”

“Oh, she didn’t use soap, doc.”

“What did she use?”

“Fantastik.”

“She used Fantastik?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you talking about the spray-on cleaner? The stuff you clean countertops and stoves with?”

“Yeah, that’s it. She sprayed him down in the bathtub and then scrubbed the marker off with a rag. That stuff really works!”

“That stuff is corrosive! It dissolves glass!”

“Hey! Maybe that’s why he’s been so itchy!”

The Drug Seeker

The first two lines of the triage note on my next patient indicate he wants a prescription refill. That sounds like an easy one. Scanning a bit further down I see the word “painkiller.” Uh-oh. Next comes the word that throws up more red flags than a parade of matadors: “OxyContin.” My heart sinks. I compose my face into something appropriately neutral and walk into the cubicle. Not too far in, mind you – I like to have an unobstructed escape route in situations like this. Just in case.

Patient X looks pretty much like I expected. He’s in his late 20s with grubby jeans, a frayed black leather jacket and tattoos crawling up his neck. He also has the obligatory “OZZY” tattoos on the knuckles of both hands. I make a mental note to get myself an incredibly original masterpiece of body art like that in the near future. I’m sure it’ll turn me into an unstoppable babe-magnet. What cute chick can resist a guy with “OZZY” tattooed across his knuckles?

“Hi Mr. Piltdown. I’m Dr. Gray. How can I help you this evening?”

“I’m in some serious pain, man.” Hmm… .

“Where is your pain located?” Please don’t tell me “everywhere.”

“Everywhere.” Damn, I asked you not to tell me that… .

“What do you usually take for it?” Surprise me and say Advil!

“OxyContin.” Oy vey… .

“That’s a pretty strong painkiller. Have you tried anything else for your pain?” Like maybe heroin?

“I’m allergic to everything else.” Wow, what are the odds?

“Who usually gives you your prescriptions?” A guy in a trench coat?

“Dr. Feelgood at the health clinic in Buffalo Groin, Saskatchewan. I just got off the bus from there and they can’t find my suitcase. It had a six-month supply of my pills in it.” They lost your luggage on the bus? Really? When did Air Canada join the bus industry?

“What other pills did you lose?” I really shouldn’t ask that, but sometimes I can’t help but be curious as to how far they’ll go with a story that’s already more improbable than anything Lewis Carroll ever wrote.

He lights up. He senses a patsy!

“Uh, just my sleeping pills and my Ritalin and my nerve pills and… .” And a partridge in a pear tree?

When I was younger and more foolhardy I used to tell these critters I had some difficulty believing their sketchy stories and was not comfortable filling their Fantasy Island drug wish lists for them. That usually spawned a whine-fest that would inevitably degenerate into either grovelling or death threats. Once I was rooked into calling someone’s out-of-province doctor to verify his story. His girlfriend’s dog had eaten his pills, as I recall. I wonder how it got the cap off? Must have been related to Lassie.

“Hello?” I began.

“I told you man, quit bugging me! I’ll have your money by next week at the latest!”

“Um, is this (416) 867-5309?”

“Oh, sorry dude, I thought you were someone else! Wazzup?”

“My name is Dr. Gray and I’m looking for a Dr. Jenny.”

The person at the other end covered his receiver for a moment and gave a few phlegmy coughs. When he started speaking again, his voice had magically descended an octave.

“Hi, this is Dr. Jenny speaking.”

“Never mind.” Click!

Trial and error has led me to an expedient solution to these encounters: “I’m sorry, but I don’t prescribe OxyContin to any emergency room patients ever, and I don’t make any exceptions to that rule.” The vast majority of miscreants seem to accept this. I guess they can tell when the jig is up. Oh well, all in a day’s work in the ER. I wonder who’s behind the next curtain?

Two-for-One Special in the ER

It was another barmy Monday morning in the department. I picked up the next chart and reviewed the triage note. Mrs. Stewart, an 85-year-old woman with a rash. I knocked on the door and entered.

An elderly, blue-haired woman was seated on the stretcher. There was also a woman in her mid-50s standing in the far corner of the room. I nodded at the younger woman before turning to face my patient.

“Hi, Mrs. Stewart. My name is Dr. Gray.”

“What?”

“I said my name is Dr. Gray.”

“You made a special tray?”

“MY NAME IS DOCTOR GRAY!”

“Oh, hello Dr. Gray. Please call me Grace. Would you like to see my rash?”

She lifted the back of her shirt to reveal a diffuse, non-specific, red rash. Damned if I knew what it was.

“How long have you had this rash?”

“What?”

“I SAID, HOW LONG… . Never mind.” I addressed the younger woman. “Do you know how long she’s had this rash?”

“I’m sorry, doctor, no.”

“Is she on any medications?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has she ever had a rash like this before?”

“I really have no idea.”

I was beginning to develop an irresistible urge to roll my eyes.

“In what way are you two related?”

“We’re not.”

“Oh, are you just a friend?”

“I’ve never met her before in my life.”

“What?! Then why are you both in the same examination room?”

“I’m not sure, doctor. Half an hour ago a nurse brought me here and told me to wait. A few minutes ago a different nurse brought her in. I think maybe someone made a mistake.”

Good thing Mrs. Stewart hadn’t come in to get her hemorrhoids checked!