Read Online Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber - Free Book Online Page B

request first, complete the task, and then go on to the next one. She showed me how to turn the pile of forms over so that the eldest form was (marvelously!) positioned on top. My breakthrough methodology means, however, that I can get my stack done in about a third of the time the other way requires, and so I do it, and hope that Mrs. Waley doesn’t catch me and make me stop. The time thus saved I devote to reading medical records, walking slowly through the narrow corridors, between the buff walls of softly shining steel. This is something so beyond the scope of Mrs. Waley’s imagination that she hasn’t thought to specifically forbid it, although it is, of course, a state and federal crime. Reading files is much like doing anthro research. It amuses me, and passes the time.
    I notice that a tape on one of the records has come loose. I leave it alone. Once I forgot myself so far as to replace some tapes myself and inspired Mrs. Waley to wrath. College graduate and can’t even put on tapes right. I hadn’t realized the importance of the three-quarter-inch clearance between each tape strip. No one can say that I don’t learn from my mistakes. I finish a cart for the medical ward and go back to my desk to get more request forms. There is a note on my desk from Mrs. Waley on top of a box full of files. It says Take these files to Billing stat.
    This is messenger’s work and I am not supposed to do it, but I suspect Mrs. Waley thinks I can be spared for this because of the efficiencies I generate. Mrs. Waley is in something of a bind, since if everyone worked as quickly as I do, she could run the place with half the people, and such diminution of her empire would never do. So she does not compliment me but sends me out on errands; it’s a creative solution.
    I stuff the box under my arm and go off to Billing, which is on the ground floor. Other than menial visits, such as this one, an excursion to Billing, for a meeting, say, is a rare and valuable prize. The hearts of all medical records clerks yearn toward Billing, as the Christian’s toward heaven and the Olo’s toward Ifé the Golden, where the gods walked. For Billing is the heart of the hospital. Without Billing, how could the nurses care, the surgeons cut, the internists ponder, the psychiatrists push dope? They could not; people would die in the streets.
    Billing is light and airy and has a carpet on the floor, unlike our green linoleum. The blessed who reside there tap on computers. Their desks are decorated with pictures of family and little furry toys and plaques with amusing sayings. We are not allowed these in medical records, since we must keep our desks clear to arrange the files. On the way back to my post, I take a small detour through the ER suite. I do this as often as I can. It adds interest to the day. Many of the people in the ER are there because of emergencies, but during the daytime the majority are there because the ER is where we have decided that poor people are to obtain medical help. They sit in colorful plastic chairs if they are older or race about if they are younger, sharing whatever viruses and bacteria they have with their socioeconomic compadres.
    An elderly lady in black attracts my attention. She is prostrate and moaning softly, attended by two younger women. They are speaking to her in Spanish. I catch my breath and feel tightness in my belly. Dulfana is pouring out of her like smoke and I can smell it. Not smell it, exactly, but that is what it feels like, an insidious quasi-olfactory sensation. Someone has witched the old lady. I turn and quickly walk away. Early in my apprenticeship, Uluné made me eat a kadoul, or magical compound, a green paste that he said would enable me to sense when witches were at work. He was always feeding me stuff, or blowing stuff up my nose or rubbing it on my skin. Much of this applied biochemistry was to enable me to interpret the condition of the fana, the magical body. Everything alive has a