W: The Planner, The Chosen (12 page)

Dr. Kinkaid was with a patient, but after Kris had waited forty-five minutes his PA, Derek, finally came to the waiting area to see her. Derek was in his early thirties—a fitness buff who thought he was a great deal better looking than Kris perceived him to be. As soon as she saw his smug attitude, she knew she was going to have a problem.

“I’m Kris Mitchell, the community liaison. I am here about one of the residents who is having a severe gout attack.”

“What is the name of the resident?”

“Janine Mitchell,” Derek looked inquisitive, so Kris added, “she is also my mother.”

“Yes, I believe that I spoke to Janine last week.  I told her that there is some medication that we can prescribe but only after the attack is over.”

“I understand that, but she needs pain medication now. She is suffering a lot.”

“Well we can’t give her pain medication unless she comes in personally so that we can evaluate her. Why hasn’t she done that?”

“Because she can’t walk. Look, I live in one of these communities myself—the FE community. I know that the clinic there uses golf carts to pick up residents who need help. Surely you have something like that here.”

Derek appeared miffed that she knew about the carts, but he did not deny that they existed.

“We try to keep that on the QT, if you know what I mean. The people here don’t like to do anything; if they see golf carts whizzing up and down, they’ll be demanding them every day.”

“I understand that, but the carts are for people who can’t get down here without assistance, and she can’t.  I need for you to send one over to her unit this morning. She should be just finishing her breakfast now. I will help her out into the cart, and then you can ‘evaluate’ her and give her some meds.”

“Alright,” he agreed reluctantly. “I will send somebody over this morning.”

“There’s one other thing, Derek. The community service police keep coming by her unit and harassing her because she has not been down to wash dishes since her attack started. I need a note excusing her from duty.”

“Not happening. All residents are required to volunteer for community service. If she gets some pain killers, there is no reason why she can’t put in a few hours a week on her assignment.”

“If everybody is required to do something, it’s not voluntary.  And just because she has some pain killers so that she is not in agony doesn’t mean that she is well enough to stand on her feet five hours a week washing dishes in the dining hall. She needs a note excusing her—permanently.” Kris felt really testy, but she was trying not to show it because she had just gotten Derek to agree to send up the golf cart.

“That definitely won’t be happening. Nobody gets excused permanently. The best I can do is to give her a thirty day do-not-call note. That allows residents to stay in good standing for thirty days without any assignments. But that is the most. If, after I evaluate her, I think it is appropriate, I will write one of those for her.”

“Fair enough.  Thank you.  So I can expect someone at their unit before noon?”

“That’s what I said,” Derek turned on his heel and walked out of the waiting room. Kris headed back to her parents’ unit. There could be no question that when Derek saw her mother he would realize how much she was suffering, and he would give her the note. At least, the nagging from the community service Nazis would stop, and Janine should be able to rest in a less stressful, painful environment.

Kris walked back to her parents’ unit and waited an hour and a half for a golf cart to appear. When she had helped her mother into it, she and Jim followed Janine to the clinic. Having arrived there, they took seats in the waiting room for another two hours waiting to see the PA.  Finally, Derek ushered Janine into an exam room and left Kris and Jim alone again.

Jim seemed upbeat and was more talkative than usual.  “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what does the W stand for?”

Kris looked at him blankly, “What?”

“Section W—what does the W stand for?”

“I don’t think it stands for anything. It’s just a designation.”

“Well it has to stand for something. Do they have Sections A-Z?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then it must stand for something. What do you think it stands for?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Fortunately, at that moment Derek reappeared and stopped this line of questioning. But Kris was a little annoyed that she and her parents had waited over three hours for a ten minute office visit.

“I have prescribed pain medication and an anti-inflammatory. These should help her feel much better.” He handed Kris the prescriptions; she could walk across the hall to the in-house pharmacy to get these filled.

“Great.  What about the note?”

“The note?” Derek stared at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

“The do-not-call note—for the cafeteria.”

“Oh, she doesn’t need that.”

“What! She certainly does, Derek. Just because she has a stronger pain medication doesn’t mean she can stand on her feet for five hours washing dishes. She needs that note so that the workers won’t bother her.”

“She’ll be back up in no time. And the visits from the community service board will be good for her—they will motivate her to get up and get on with her life instead of just sitting around and doing nothing for a month.”

“This is ridiculous. My mother does not need motivation. I want to talk to Dr. Kinkaid, right now.”

“Dr. Kinkaid is at lunch, right now, and then he is taking the rest of the afternoon off.  You can call him and talk to him if you want to, but he won’t tell you anything different from what I just have.”

Kris looked at her watch. Most of the day was gone; she needed to get her mother’s prescription filled and take her back to the unit.  She took down Dr. Kinkaid’s number.  “Is he working tomorrow?”

“Half a day, until noon,” Derek wore a smug, knowing expression that said, “Call if you want to, but it won’t make any difference.”

“Fine, I will call him tomorrow.”

After Janine was back at the unit, Kris got her settled on the sofa and then went to get her a drink of water to take her medication. As she opened the cabinet, a cockroach practically jumped out of the cabinet at her. Kris jumped back and shrieked; she had always been afraid of roaches, even as a little girl, and she had never gotten over it. The roach was running across the floor, but Kris chased it and stomped it to death before it reached Janine’s couch.

“I am going to tell the maintenance people to spray this place. This is unbelievable.”

“They were actually spraying the building last week.  I don’t know why they don’t just use sugar water—the roaches would probably like it better, and it would work about as well,” Janine quipped. Then she added, “the problem is that everything here has to be environmentally friendly, so they can’t spray with anything that would actually kill the bugs.”

“Maybe, but I’m thinking they can do better than this,” Kris finished filling the cup and brought it to her mother.  “I will check with maintenance tomorrow.

“Mom, you need to let me know when you are sick like this.  I can help you.” For the first time since leaving her own unit she thought about the phone she had brought with her.  “That reminds me. I know that the internet connection can be terrible here, so I brought you something so that we can stay in touch with each other.” She pulled the phone out of her purse. “Look, it’s a Smart phone. I got it for you on my plan, so we are on the same network.”

“I think we have enough ‘Smart’ things in this community already, Kris.”

Kris smiled, “This is one ‘Smart’ idea worth having.  Look, you can use it to get on the internet. You can call me; my number is pre-programmed. I set up an account for you on Friendshare,” Kris showed her mother the “Janine Mitchell” page. “I will upload a different picture for you if you don’t like this one; I thought it was nice. You and I are already friends; you can post updates and tell me if you need something. If you ‘friend’ Karyn she can share pictures of the kids with you. It will make it much easier for you to let us know if you need something.” Kris spent another hour showing her mother the phone’s features before she finally had to leave to return to her own community.

The next morning, she started calling Dr. Kinkaid as soon as the clinic opened at 8:00.  Each time she called, she was told that he was not in yet, or that he was with a patient, or that he was unavailable. By 11:30 she knew that her window of opportunity to reach him was fast disappearing, so she sat at her table in the dining hall with her phone up against her ear on hold waiting for Kinkaid to come to the phone.

At 11:50, after about forty-five minutes of continuous elevator music, she heard the call disconnect on the clinic’s end. She had never spoken with Kinkaid. She swore under her breath as she hung up the phone just as Cindy, the Planning receptionist walked by.

Cindy was twenty-two, blonde and tan, and in excellent physical condition. She had a perky personality for a government employee—of course, she had been a government employee for only a few months. She handled all of the calls for the Planners, and like all of the unmarried employees of the Planning Division, she was required to live in the FE singles’ housing as a condition of her employment. She made friends easily, both because she was young and pretty and because she was a very outgoing person. Kris had surmised that Cindy was working her way through school with this job, and when school ended, so would her employment at FMPD.

“What’s the matter?” Cindy observed how angry Kris was as she put her phone back in her purse.

“Oh, nothing. I just spent the entire morning on the phone trying to talk to the resident doctor out at W, and he would not come to the phone. I have been on hold for forty-five minutes, and I just got disconnected. Stupid jackass.”

“Why do you need to talk to Kinkaid?”

“My mother is having a gout attack, and she needs a do-not-call note from the clinic so that the dining hall volunteer crew will stop harassing her. The PA won’t give her the note; so I have to get it from Kinkaid, but he apparently can’t be bothered to come to the phone.”

“Why don’t you ask Dr. Linton for a note?” Cindy sat down opposite Kris. “He’s a great doctor. I sprained my wrist a few days ago, and he fixed me right up.” As she spoke about the incident, she took on a dreamy look as if she were speaking about meeting a movie star.

Kris leaned back in her chair and looked at the young, wide-eyed girl in front of her. She was trying to remember how it had felt to be as young and ignorant of the world as Cindy, but as hard as she tried she could not stir any familiar memories.

Finally, she smiled, “I really hate to be the one to break this to you, Cindy, but there are no great doctors here. I used to sell houses to great doctors. They live in multi-million dollar mansions; they have garages full of expensive cars, and they have second homes near ski-resorts. They do not work for the government, live in two hundred square foot roach-infested apartments and get paid in credits. Great doctors’ dogs live better than we do. But aside from all that, Dr. Linton doesn’t have any more authority over there than I do.”

“Sure he does,” Cindy countered ignoring all of the other observations Kris had just made. “Any doctor on the FMPD payroll can treat any patient, and any doctor can send over a do-not-call note—for anybody. Ask him—he really is a great doctor and a great person. And he has a wonderful bedside manner.”

Now Kris laughed—mainly at the dreamy look on Cindy’s face when she spoke those final words. “Now that part I do believe, seeing the way you are going on about him.”

Cindy looked startled to see Kris laughing. “No, not like that. I mean, I would like for it to be like that, but I think he’s just really lonely or shy or something.  All he needs is the right woman to help him come out of his shell.”

“I am sure that is exactly what girls thought about Ted Bundy, too.”  Kris noted the confused look on Cindy’s face—she had apparently never heard of Ted Bundy, so Kris changed the subject. “Are you sure that he has the authority to give us a note?”

“Absolutely. It happens all the time. Doctors do not answer to Planners, but Planners can definitely get help from a different doctor. It just has to be somebody working for FMPD.”

“Thanks, Cindy.  I appreciate the info.”

Kris got up to walk over to the clinic. She was going to stop that obnoxious little elf from banging on her mother’s door every day if it meant going to the Surgeon General of the United States, so she might as well ask Michael Linton first.

Linton was out when she arrived; she was told that he would not be back until Monday morning. That would have to do. She would call him from work tomorrow and see if she could at least get him to come to the phone.

She passed the rest of the day window shopping through the few stores at FE before she walked over to the dining hall to eat dinner at 5:00. Just as she arrived, she heard an announcement over the PA system, “The President of the United States will be addressing the nation in five minutes. We will be broadcasting the address live.”

“Great,” she murmured to herself. The last thing she wanted to hear was another official speech. She despised the fact that all of the President’s speeches were broadcast over the community PA system so that every resident was forced to listen, whether he wanted to or not.