The Hospital

On Monday morning, a patient named Guernsey...

male, middle 70s, was admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains.

He had been referred by a nursing home...

where the doctor had diagnosed his condition as Angina pectoris.

It is axiomatic...

that nursing-home doctors are always wrong.

The intern who admitted Mr. Guernsey, however...

accepted the diagnosis and prescribed morphine...

a drug suitable for angina, but not at all suitable for emphysema...

which is unfortunately what the old man actually had.

Within an hour, the patient became unresponsive and diaphoretic...

and was raced up to Intensive Care, with an irregular pulse of 150...

blood pressure 90 over 60, respiration rapid and shallow.

The resident on duty in Intensive Care compounded the blunder...

by treating the old man for pulmonary edema.

He gave him digitalis, diuretics and oxygen.

This restored the old man's color.

He was sent to his room in the Holly Pavilion...

ruddy-complected and peacefully asleep.

But the patient was in CO 2 narcosis, and died at 7.;30 that evening.

I mention all this only to explain how the bed in Room 806 became available.

The intern involved was a prickly young buck named Schaefer...

who had a good thing going for him with a technician in the Hematology Lab.

In the haphazard fashion of hospital romances...

Dr. Schaefer had been zapping this girl...

on wheelchairs, stretchers, pantry shelves...

in the kitchen, in the morgue, in the dark corners of corridors...

standing up, sitting down...

So you can imagine what an available bed meant to him.

Sheila, this is Howard.

I got a bed for us for tonight. A real, honest-to-God bed.

Dr. Schaefer ...

Did you know that Dr. Schaefer was in Room 806 because he's dead?

What?

I'm just telling you that Dr. Schaefer is dead.

- What do you want, Perez? - I don't know what this is about...

but Dr. Schaefer is in Room 806 with an IV running, and he's dead.

- I didn't even know he was sick. - What the hell are you talking about?

- Do you know what she's talking about? - No.

Maybe I'm going crazy. I don't know.

Isn't Room 806 the patient Guernsey?

Did something happen that maybe I didn't know about?

I don't know what you're talking about.

This is the nuttiest thing I ever saw. Dr. Schaefer is in Room 806, dead.

What Dr. Schaefer? Our Dr. Schaefer?

Our Dr. Schaefer. The one who's always grabbing everybody's ass.

- Do you know what she's talking about? - No.

I don't know what you're talking about.

What do you mean, "Dr. Schaefer's in Room 806, dead"?

I mean, he's lying on the far bed, stone dead, and with an IV.

If you don't believe me, you ought to go and look for yourself.

Maybe you'd better call Mrs. Christie.

Dr. Bock.

Yes, Mrs. Christie, what is it?

It's all right. I'd have to be getting up any minute, anyway.

Sorry, I missed that. Would you say it again, please?

I know.

Schaefer, the stud with the glasses, fancies all the nurses.

I'm afraid I don't understand. What do you mean?

Was he sick?

I mean ...

What was the cause of death?

Was he being treated? I don't understand.

What was he doing in the bed? You did say ...

Mrs. Christie, did you call the office?

Good, I'll ...

It's all right.

I'd be getting my wake-up call any minute, anyway.

People!

What do you say, Sundstrom?

How long do you think your monopolistic, exclusionary, racist policies will work?

Free the hope!

Now, hold it.

Herb! I'm glad I caught up with you.

How's it going?

One of my interns dropped dead this morning.

Really? I'm sorry to hear that.

I understand you moved out to a hotel.

- Things got that bad with Phyllis? - It's been that bad for 24 years.

You gonna be solicitous?

God.

I'm the guy that brought you into this hospital...

so I think I can skip the diplomatic overtures.

Marty stopped me in the hall yesterday, very upset.

He had just had lunch with you. He said you sounded suicidal.

Marty tends to be extravagant, but he's not the only one.

Jack Singer mentioned that you were boozing it up a lot.

Let's face it, you have been sloughing off.

I understand you haven't even been doing rounds.

I'm going to do rounds today.

Do you want to take a couple of days off?

Go down to Montego Bay, get drunk, get laid, get a little sun?

For God's sake, I'm 53 years old, with all the attendant fears.

I just left my wife, after 24 years. A standard case of menopausal melancholy.

- Maybe you wanna see Einhorn. - Don't wanna see a psychiatrist, don't worry.

If I just get to work, I'll be fine. I'm sorry if I caused you concern.

Sid called from St. Luke's. He said the demonstrators there...

- are planning a march to join those here. - God.

- Did you call the cops? - Sure.

- They're all in 806, Doctor. - What happened?

I think I'll just let Mrs. Christie tell you about it.

Oh, boy, what happened?

I've seen some pretty good snafus. But this one ...

There's a certain splendor to this one.

One of the night nurses thought he was a patient...

and plugged an IV into him. He was a diabetic.

What do you mean she plugged an IV into him?

It's a really screwed-up story.

We had an old man in there who died last night.

So the bed was available. You know Schaefer. He's Sammy Stud.

He talked a nurse into zapping him on the bed?

A girl from Hematology he's been running around with.

- God, it's a Roman farce! - I thought I heard you out here.

I suggest you do that right now.

I'm so terribly sorry.

As I understand it...

a nurse inadvertently administered an IV to Schaefer. How could that happen?

- We ought to straighten this out elsewhere. - Very good idea.

Oh, God, what a mess!

- These things happen. - I'd better call the Medical Examiner.

- I still don't understand what happened. - It took us an hour to get it sorted out.

A patient named Guernsey died last night, in 806.

That information wasn't given to the night nurses. These things happen.

At any rate, according to the cardex...

the patient, Guernsey, was down for 25 mg of Sparine at q. 6h.

Mrs. Reardon sent Nurse Perez to give him his 12:00 shot.

In the meantime, Dr. Schaefer usurped that particular bed...

for his own purposes.

Dr. Brubaker suggests it was for a love tryst...

and some weight is given that hypothesis...

- by the fact that Dr. Schaefer was naked. - I get the drift.

Nurse Perez went in and sedated Dr. Schaefer...

thinking it was the patient Guernsey. What I don't understand...

May I finish, please?

After Perez gave him his shot, she noticed the IV was pinched off on the bed.

She reported this to Mrs. Reardon...

who then assigned Nurse Rivers to restart the IV.

Rivers was a float. She didn't even know the staff people on the floor.

Nobody knew what the patient looked like, since he'd only been admitted that morning.

- So she plugged an IV into him. - Yes.

- How much? - A liter.

Five percent glucose solution won't kill anybody.

Was he dehydrated? Did he have any ancillary conditions?

Didn't anybody bother to go check on him during the night?

Even under the impression that he was merely a patient?

Was he hyperosmolar? Did he have a bad heart?

He must have had some sort of thrombosis.

I want the post done here, Mr. Hitchcock.

You and I better have a chat about your excessive use of float nurses.

I've got nearly a thousand nurses in this hospital...

Every time one of them has her period, she disappears for three days.

Doctors complain they can't find the same nurse on the same floor...

two days in a row.

What am I gonna tell Schaefer's parents?

That a substitute nurse assassinated him...

as she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?

My God!

The incompetence here is absolutely radiant!

Two nurses walk into a room and stick needles in a man...

and one of those is a Number 18 Jelco, tourniquet the poor guy...

anchor the poor guy's arm with adhesive tape...

and it's the wrong poor son of a bitch!

Where do you train your nurses, Mrs. Christie? Dachau?

All right.

Wrap him up and get him down to Pathology.

I'm especially interested in his blood sugar.

A liter of glucose never killed anybody. Your ladies must have done something else.

- Will there be anything else? - No.

Before you call the family, I wish you'd speak to Mr. Mead about this.

We'd like, naturally, to avoid litigation.

A few things have been piling up. Would you like to go into them?

A quickie.

Dr. Esterhazy wants to start hiring temporary people...

to cover the summer vacations.

He says, last year, some of the replacement people...

didn't receive their checks until they waited six months.

He wonders if you could do something about getting these people paid promptly.

Ms. Aronivici complains the lab reports are coming in slow into the ER.

I called Dr. Immelman about that, and she says three microscopes...

have been stolen out of her lab in the last two months.

Charlie Walters also complains about pilferage.

I've clumped all these together for you.

As you know...

we've agreed to take over the local ambulance cases...

as part of the hospital's commitment to the community...

and it's created a serious overload in ER.

I don't know why this was dumped in our lap, but they seem to think...

Find out if Dr. Einhorn is in his office.

Which Dr. Einhorn?

- Ophthalmology or Psychiatry? - Psychiatry. Never mind. I'll look in, myself.

Is he in?

- Can I have a minute, Joe? - Of course.

I've been having periods of acute depression, recently.

Apparently, it's becoming noticeable. A number of people have remarked about it.

John Sundstrom thought it might be a good idea if I spoke to you about it.

- Do you want to sit down? - No. I'm not good at confessional.

What can I tell you?

The last year, two, three ... It goes way back, I suppose.

I remember entertaining suicidal thoughts as a college student.

At any rate...