Lady Justice and the Vet

by Robert Thornhill

  “Something like that. How about you? You’re not that old.”

  Murray smiled. “Playing the system. I got T-boned by a snot-nosed, pimple-faced kid that was texting his girlfriend --- banged me up pretty bad and they put me in here for rehab. Turned out the kid was the son of a big shot politician that didn’t want his constituents knowing his bratty son had winged a senior citizen. Instead of me suing his ass and talking to the press, he made a deal with his insurance company to transfer me to the residential side and they’re picking up the tab as long as I keep my mouth shut.”

  “Sweet!”

  “No kidding! The rehab was painful as hell, but it was worth it to get away from the dump I was living in. Say, how’d you enjoy the soup de jour and the hockey puck roll we had for lunch?”

  “Nothing to write home about.”

  “You can say that again. Tonight is goulash, another Still Meadows treat.”

  “Sounds --- interesting.”

  “That’s one way to put it. You got five bucks?”

  “Uhhh --- yes. Why?”

  “Hand it over and come to my place around seven o’clock if you’d like a slice of meat lover’s from Pizza Hut. We get a delivery from Frankie every week on goulash night.”

  I handed him the five. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Hey! New guy on the block. We take care of our own.”

  I had heard that every outfit in the army had some guy who could get anything you wanted --- like Klinger on the old MASH TV show, and it was becoming quite obvious that Murray was the Still Meadows ‘go-to’ guy.

  At that moment, a nurse came into the room carrying a clip board. “Mr. Williams, the doctor will be here in a few minutes and we need to prep you for your intake exam.”

  I started to protest, but the nurse cut me off.

  “Standard procedure. If we’re going to take care of you properly, we have to establish a baseline. It won’t take long.”

  I looked at Murray and he just shrugged his shoulders.

  I followed the nurse to an exam room in the acute care wing.

  In the hall we passed Ox carrying a metal bedpan. I thought that I heard him muttering something like, “When this is over, I’m getting a new partner.”

  Once inside, the nurse handed me a gown and ordered me to strip. I hate hospital gowns. I’ve never understood why they open and tie in the back. It’s impossible to keep your ass from hanging out.

  When I had changed, she reappeared and did the weight, temperature and blood pressure thing, carefully making notes on my chart.

  “The doctor will be here shortly,” she said closing the door.

  The ‘shortly’ turned out to be at least forty-five minutes. By the time the doctor arrived, I was freezing and my butt was stuck to the exam table.

  “Mr. Williams,” he said, picking up my chart. “Nice to have you with us. I’m Dr. Browning and I will be taking care of you here at Still Meadows.”

  I just nodded. At that moment I wasn’t feeling particularly sociable.

  “Just a few routine tests and we’ll let you get back to your activities.”

  He listened to my heart and lungs, tapped my chest with his fingers and tested my reflexes with a rubber hammer. I was hoping that would be the extent of it, but my heart sank when I saw him snap on a pair of rubber gloves and reach for the Vaseline.

  In the next fifteen minutes, Dr. Browning knew more about my anatomy than my wife ever would and he hadn’t even bought me dinner.

  “Looks like you’re in pretty good shape,” he said, peeling off the gloves. “I have you scheduled for an EKG and a stress test in the morning.”

  “Why do I need those? My ticker’s just fine.”

  “I’m sure Nurse Bradley told you that we have to establish a baseline. It’s just routine. Nothing to be concerned about.”

  After I was dressed and released, I did some mental calculations based on numbers that Hodges had given me.

  Office visit --- $250.00

  EKG --- $1,500.00

  Stress test --- $3,800.00

  Medicare would be getting a bill for $5,550.00 and I hadn’t even been at Still Meadows twenty-four hours.

  The goulash was exactly as billed --- less than satisfying.

  Murray and I were in the game room when Nurse Bradley came around with a tray of pills and tiny cups of water.

  “Time for your evening vitamins,” she announced with a broad smile. “Oh good, I can catch you both here.”

  Murray took the cup with the pill, popped it in his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of water. Following his example, I did the same.

  When the nurse was out of earshot, Murray whispered, “Did you swallow it?”

  I nodded. “Wasn’t that the idea?”

  “That’s their idea,” he said, spitting the pill into his hand and tossing it into the trash. “Vitamins my ass. They’re tranquilizers and unless you want to wind up like Freddy over there, you’d better learn how to slip them under your tongue.”

  I looked at Freddy who was sitting quietly with a blank stare on his face.

  “But why?”

  “Because people pumped full of Valium don’t cause no ruckus,” he replied. “Tried to tell old Freddy but he’s one of those guys that just has to follow the rules. Practice it with a penny. Just don’t swallow too many. They check your stools.”

  I remembered reading how Hitler put fluoride in the water supply at the Nazi concentration camps to keep the prisoners docile and a chill ran up my spine.

  “That’s not all,” Murray continued. “That goulash you ate tonight --- pumped full of saltpeter --- they don’t want their residents running around with boners.”

  “Oh come on! That’s just an old wife’s tale. It’s not really an anaphrodisiac.”

  “Say what you want, but the stuff does two things --- it causes relaxation of involuntary muscle fiber and lowers body temperature. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you’re ‘hot to trot,’ shrinkin’ the snake and cooling you off is going to severely hamper your performance. Anyway, we got that covered too,” he said pulling a vial of little blue pills out of his pocket. “If you need any Mr. Blues, just let me know.”

  Remembering the age of the residents, I had to ask. “Do you get a lot of requests for those around here?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said with a wink.

  I should have known the answer to that question. A few years ago, I received a call from my father whom I hadn’t seen in years. He was being thrown out of the Shady Glen nursing home due to ‘lewd and lascivious’ behavior. He had founded the VP Club, Viagra Poppers, and their motto was ‘better living through chemistry.’

  He lives in one of the apartments in my building now and has taken up with Bernice, another long-time octogenarian tenant. It’s quite disconcerting when I find packages under the mailbox addressed to them from Priscilla’s Adult Novelty Store.

  Murray looked at his watch. “We’d better skedaddle. Frankie will be here with the pizza anytime.

  Two other gentlemen and a half dozen women had already gathered in Murray’s apartment. The pizza was already there.

  “You owe me ten bucks, Murray,” one of the guys said.

  Murray handed over his five and mine and introduced me to the group.

  After we had wolfed down the gooey pizza, Murray looked at his watch again. “Better stow the boxes,” he said. “Nurse Bradly will be here any time.”

  One of the guys slipped the boxes under the bed while a gal named Bonnie sprayed a can of lilac Renuzit liberally around the room.

  I felt like I was in the old 1953 movie Stalag 17, about American prisoners of war in a Nazi concentration camp, waiting for Sergeant Schultz to make his rounds.

  Bonnie had just slipped the aerosol can in her purse when there was a knock on the door.

  “Come on in,” Murray called amiably.

  Nurse Bradley opened the door, sniffed the air and looked suspiciously at our little group. />
  “What’s the purpose of this little gathering?”

  “Just making some plans for our field trip to Powell Gardens next week,” Murray replied innocently.

  “Well, time to break it up. It’s almost ‘lights out.’ Don’t make me send Dexter down here.”

  After she was gone, I asked, “Who’s Dexter?”

  “Dexter is their muscle --- their enforcer. If anyone gets out of line, they send the Incredible Hulk to straighten things out. He’s got a real mean streak. You don’t want to mess with him. Now I hear they’ve hired another Neanderthal --- Ox, if you can believe it. They must be expecting trouble.”

  “The new guy gets trash duty,” someone said and there were nods all around.

  Murray dug the boxes from under the bed and stuffed them in a trash bag. “Go out the back,” he said, handing me the bag. “There’s a dumpster by the back kitchen door. Just don’t get caught.”

  I peeked out of the back door and seeing no one, I made my way to the kitchen end of the building. I had just closed the lid to the dumpster when the beam of a flashlight blinded me.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here? See, I told you they were sneaky little bastards.”

  When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the massive silhouettes of Ox and another behemoth that had to be Dexter looming in the darkness.

  “Uhhh, just getting rid of some trash from unpacking,” I stammered.

  “You’re the new guy,” Dexter said, giving me a closer look. “I’ll give you a pass this time, since you don’t know the rules, but from now on, no roaming around at night. It can be pretty dangerous out here if you know what I mean.”

  If that was meant to be a veiled threat, there wasn’t much of a veil.

  “Sure, no problem,” I said, extending my hand. “By the way, my name is Walt.”

  Dexter just looked at my outstretched hand and sneered, “Get back to your room. Come on, Ox. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  As Dexter stalked away, Ox whispered, “I’ll be by later.”

  Around eleven, I heard a faint knock on the door.

  I opened it and Ox slid inside.

  “Nice partner you’ve got there,” I remarked.

  “You have no idea. That guy’s a freak. So how’s your day been?”

  “Well, not too bad other than having a doctor’s fist shoved up my kiester. How about you?”

  “You haven’t lived until you’ve given a ninety year old guy with loose bowels a sponge bath.”

  “So much for a cushy assignment.”

  “Anything suspicious so far?”

  “I have more tests scheduled for tomorrow morning. I don’t really need them, but they say it’s just part of their intake procedure --- establishing a baseline or some bullshit like that. Shaky, but not anything you could call outright fraud. You find anything?”

  “Nope. They’ve kept me busy mopping floors and emptying bedpans. Now that Dexter is gone, I’m going to use my pass key and do some snooping around in the office. Hodges gave me a list of things to look for.”

  As he was leaving, I thought of one more thing. “Don’t eat in the dining room unless you just have to.”

  I saw the puzzled look on his face. “Why in the world not?”

  “Let’s just say that there’s an outside chance you could be embarrassed the next time you and Judy --- uhhh --- you know.”

  “Point taken! I’ll bring a sandwich.”

  The next morning, right after breakfast, Nurse Bradley summoned me to the exam room and made me change into one of those damnable gowns.

  After I was stripped and gowned, she led me to a room filled with all kinds of test equipment.

  “Have a seat,” she ordered. “We’ll do the EKG first.”

  She rubbed some gooey stuff on my body and attached electrodes. Although I had never seen an execution in person, I’d seen several on TV and this was exactly what they did to the prisoner after strapping him into the chair. I think she sensed my apprehension.

  “Just relax. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Sure, Warden! I thought.

  When that ordeal was over, she led me to a treadmill and attached more electrodes. Then she turned on the machine.

  I’d never done a treadmill before --- especially commando. My legs started pumping and I could feel Mr. Winkie and the boys swaying in the breeze and my buns bouncing up and down like two rubber balls.

  I’ve never figured out why humiliation has to be such a big part of a medical procedure.

  After the treadmill, I was told to sit tight and that the doctor would be right in. I figured I was in for another hour wait, but to my surprise he knocked and entered a few minutes later.

  After studying the results of the tests, he clapped me on the back. “You were absolutely right. Nothing wrong with your ticker.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “Good! Are we through with the testing now?”

  “Almost,” he replied. “Just two more. I have you scheduled for a colonoscopy and an endoscopy on Friday. We don’t do those here. We’ll have an ambulance take you to an outpatient surgical center nearby.”

  I almost fell off of the exam table.

  Doc Johnson, my regular physician had been bugging me for years to have a colonoscopy. He said everybody over 55 should have one, but so far, I had resisted. My grandfather lived to be ninety-five, and to my knowledge, he did so without ever having a camera poked up his butt.

  I started to protest, but he cut me off.

  “Baseline. Remember? Besides, you never know whether there’s some of those bothersome little polyps in there until you look.”

  I figured arguing would be useless. It was three days until Friday and I just had to hope we would get this thing wrapped up before I had my Kodak moment.

  When I was dressed, I made my way to the game room. Murray was waiting for me.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Healthy as a horse, but now I have a colonoscopy to look forward to.”

  Murray smiled. “There’s a way to beat that too ---well, not the first one, but the ones that come later.”

  “Later! Good Lord! How many times do they invade your rectum around here?”

  “Twice a year. Regular as clockwork.”

  “Everybody? Even the ninety year old ones in the acute ward that are nearly comatose?”

  “Everyone! They call it preventive medicine. Better to find a pre-cancerous polyp and remove it than to let it go and have chemo later.”

  I did some quick math. According to Hodges, both the colonoscopy and the endoscopy were about $4,500 each including the surgical facility. There were about two hundred residents at Still Meadows and if each one got the two procedures twice a year --- that amounted to a whopping $3,600,000! No wonder Medicare was going broke!

  “Tell me about beating the system.”

  “Ever had one?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, tomorrow, they’ll start giving you pills to cleanse your colon. You’ll be on the throne every couple of hours.”

  I had done a colon cleanse at Maggie’s insistence and I was well aware of the discomfort involved.

  “Then they’ll put you on a liquid diet the day before. They want you completely empty before the procedure. If you want to beat the thing, you’d better learn how to tongue those poop pills --- fast! The second phase is to load up on deep dish, double cheese pizza. Freddie knows the drill. The idea is to clog up the old poop chute. If they can’t get the camera up the tube, they’ll let you alone. You’ll still have to make regular trips to the can so they’ll think you’re on the program, so take a good book with you.”

  “So how many have you had?”

  “Just the first one. Old Jeb gave me this little talk before he kicked the bucket and I haven’t had one since.”

  This was the first real clue we’d had. I would have Ox check Murray’s medical record and if Still Meadows had submitted more than one colonoscopy to Medicare, we’d have them for phantom billing.<
br />
  I decided to try to push my luck a bit. “Mind if I ask you another question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “This place costs a small fortune. I know I couldn’t afford it without good old Brian picking up the tab and I’m guessing you wouldn’t be here without the insurance company. Looking around, some of these folks just don’t look that affluent. Any idea how they can afford a place like this?”

  “I’ve wondered that myself. Everybody’s got a story I guess. Take old Jimmy over there.”

  I looked where he was pointing and saw an elderly gentleman that looked more like a Three Trails transient than a Still Meadows resident.

  “What about him?”

  “Quiet fellow. Showed up one day and before the week was over, they wheeled him away for a heart valve replacement.”

  “Bet that’s expensive.”

  “Right at thirty-five grand. Funny thing though.”

  “What?”

  “I read up on those valve replacements and they have to crack open your chest to get the job done.”

  “So?”

  “So old Jimmy doesn’t have a mark on his chest.”

  Bingo!

  CHAPTER 6

  Tracy Singleton smiled as Ben walked into the kitchen with a big grin on his face.

  “Well aren’t you chipper this morning?”

  “Three nights without a nightmare,” he said, planting a big kiss on her cheek. “Makes all the difference in the world. I think maybe all those group sessions are beginning to pay off.”

  “Where are you working today?”

  “Still Meadows. I get to run the zero turn mower. I love that thing. Oh, by the way, it’ll be at least seven o’clock when I get home. I’m going to run by the V.A Hospital. Archie’s playing in a wheelchair basketball game and he wants a cheering section.”

  “How’s he getting along,” Tracy asked, setting a stack of pancakes on the table.

  “Good as can be expected for a guy with no legs. He finished his vocational rehab and thinks he might have a computer job lined up. I hope so. He really needs to get away from that hospital.”

  “Since you’re feeling a little better,” Tracy said with a bit of hesitancy, “do you think you’d be up to some company?”