Blood Simple

Illustrations by Bob AulSend anonymous thanks, confessions or accusations—changing or deleting the names of the guilty and innocent —to "Hey, You!" c/oOC Weekly, P.O. Box 10788, Costa Mesa, CA 92627-0247, or e-mail us at letters@ocweekly.com.

I'm in the middle of drawing blood from a patient, and you open the curtain. "Step outside," you bark sternly. I immediately get up, tell you to please wait until I'm done with my patient, and close the curtain in your face. You storm off in a huff. When I finally track you down later—by the way, I wear one pager for the hospital and three more for the clinics for a reason—you immediately jump down my throat because of a complaint filed against me by an office worker. My crime? I made her wait until I was done attending to a different patient before I let her gather insurance information. And now you're writing me up for it! You two obviously haven't bothered to look at hospital policy. If you had, you'd know that I am forbidden from stopping midway through a blood draw. And if you'd bothered to look at my union contract, you'd know you can't write me up for anything until you at least hear my side of the story. I know that you were just promoted to management and the office worker just got hired a couple of months ago, but both of you need to learn something very quickly: you won't last long if you don't realize we longtime nurses and technicians actually know a thing or three. By the way, those four pagers on your desk? That means I've gone home sick. I'll return in a few days (with the requisite doctor's note). Have a great time covering for me. Oh, and if you take a peek at my union contract, you'll discover you can't do a thing about it.