“I got a call this morning from one of our board members. She told me that a friend of hers was brought here from an auto accident, and the emergency room had run out of stretchers.” A harder tone slowly took over her voice. “Ran…out…of…stretchers. Can you believe it?” Cheryl Beth nodded sympathetically. The ER often ran out of stretchers. Memorial was the primary caregiver for thousands of low-income and indigent people. It also operated a Level One trauma center. The hospital had been through years of budget cuts that had not just made it hard to buy new equipment, but had even reduced the nursing staff. Cheryl Beth could see it on nearly every floor, the nurses overworked, understaffed. It was a wonder they did so well.
“This hospital is in trouble,” Stephanie said. “I’m told this used to be the top hospital in the city, the place where the rich came for treatment. Now we have a great neuro-science unit. We’re still a teaching hospital. Then, well, what’s left is pretty much a welfare hospital.” Her eyes narrowed. “There’s talk of merging with University Hospital, if they would have us. Or simply shutting down. Do you know that?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Cheryl Beth, of course, had heard all the gossip. She also had been approached several times about joining University Hospital, which made her even less afraid of Stephanie Ott.
The suit kept talking. “It doesn’t help that the black ministers have been holding a vigil outside every night this week, because of that boy, I mean, young man, whom the police shot. Do we need this kind of trouble? Why are they singling us out? I just don’t understand this sense of grievance.”
“Well, I’m not black,” Cheryl Beth said. “So I can’t see it through their eyes. There’s a lot of hurt…” She stopped herself.
Ott looked at Cheryl Beth as if she should say something, to make sense of all this…to take the blame? She said, “Why are you telling me this, Stephanie?”
The woman stood and strode to her window, staring out at the black scrimshaw of winter trees. “I’ve always had my reservations about you. You like to make your own rules.”
“I can play well with others,” Cheryl Beth said lightly.
“You didn’t want to stay on the pain management committee…”
“I just thought I could use those eight hours a week to be helping people.”
“Yes, well. We’d all like to stay in our comfort zones.” She turned back and stared at Cheryl Beth. “You do things you shouldn’t. Doctors complain.”
