Linus’s company visor itched his scalp. He jerked his head and removed one of the disposable polyethylene gloves, then absentmindedly he knocked off the visor and scratched his head with the gloved hand.
A raucous clamoring resounded from the kitchen. Linus sniffed and yawned incuriously, expecting the evening’s successor, who wouldn’t have arrived soused a first time.
Instead, two nurses in bouffant caps and periwinkle sanitary scrubs burst open the swinging door and barged onto the line. Between them they rolled a gurney, on which a middle-aged man squirmed, strapped and intubated.
“Hey, hey!” Linus exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
The foremost nurse had nearly run over Linus before bracing back against the gurney and halting. He wiped his moist brow. “Hi, gimme an eight-inch sub on ciabatta. Two of ‘em actually.”
“Gotta be on that side,” Linus insisted, pointing across the buffet. “Man, over there.”
“What, why?” the nurse asked, immediately flushed.
“This is employees only,” Linus said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the nurse growled. Behind, the strapped patient craned his head and gurgled and craned all-around with bulging eyes. The second nurse shushed and slapped the patient’s cheeks gently and impatiently but otherwise looked bored.
“Go back through,” Linus urged.
He overheard the nurses grumbling in the kitchen as they trekked backwards, bumping the stretcher against the prep table.
“Rules for everything now, it’s a complete bureaucracy Hal,” the angrier nurse’s voice echoed. “I’m telling you, I’m telling you, you just gotta cut through all this red tape every chance you get. You just gotta cut through it.”
“It’s hopeless,” the other man, Hal, said in a low monotone. “You try to cut through and they jam you up and they plug the leak back up tight.”
Linus quit listening. He cursed quietly and wished the nurses would leave him alone as he flipped several notches along the glass display above mucilaginous meats, cheeses and marshy vegetables. He wanted to be home on his computer, arguing with strangers online.
There was the sound of a door slamming, and the nurses reappeared around the corner and walked into the alcove, dragging the gurney. One of the wheels stuck and skidded against a tiled lip with a grating noise. The angrier nurse gave it a shove.
“What’ll it be?” Linus announced listlessly.
“Him?” the nurse Hal answered, suddenly animated. “Fifty-three, male. Pulmonary infarction——’e diagnosed ‘imself. We picked ‘im up over on twentieth, someone called anonymously but ‘e said could the dispatcher wait fifteen minutes. Ask me, I think it was ‘im, on account o—”
“Hal we’re not talking shop,” the other man grumbled. “I’m on break.”
“Oh right. You’re right, it’s boring,” Hal said, deflating.
zoologic Woo 