While We're on the Subject

They come every so often.

These dreams to haunt me.

Which is funny because I haven't worked there for two and a half years--longer than my span there. But something in my subconscious won't let it go. They say dreams are your attempt to work through issues. I guess I still have issues.

It always starts the same way. They ask me to sub for a day in my old position as a medical receptionist. For some reason, though I hated the job, I always say yes. And every time, the same thing happens.

I show up to find no charts have been prepared for the day's clinic, no insurances have been called. The lobby floods with impatient patients pounding the counter and end tables and walls. Doctors yell at me. The other office employees gossip about celebraties and friends. (Let me note here that while the girls dispensed gossip in heavy doses, they never would abandon me like a pain pill on an empty stomach.)

This time, there was a slight variation. One doctor lounged on a countertop studying (for what, I have no idea). Another doctor paraded around in his new scrubs laughing at how they were twice as big as his waist (ala Jarrod of Subway fame). Dr. Sherman T. Potter from M*A*S*H (the world's greatest TV show--don't even try to argue with me about that) has joined the office. And there are marionettes.

Usually, it doesn't occur to me to walk out. It doesn't occur to me that I don't need to be there, that I have a life I love.

This time, I unloosed my tongue. I told the patients to sit down and shut up or leave with their bursting appendices.

I told the lounging doctor (whose favorite book in real life is Waldon Pond) that he's as un-Thoreau as they come, just look at how snappy he dresses, and for heaven's sake he's the one who taught me the meaning of chartreuse (all of which is true).

I told Dr. Potter that just because he played one on TV doesn't qualify him to remove gall bladders.

I put empty charts without so much as a name (or worse, the wrong name) in the slots on the doors.

(I didn't, however, say anything to the marionettes.)

Perhaps this is the end. Perhaps I've now geysered all that pent-up frustration.

Or maybe it's only the beginning...