Somewhere near to the end..

Things are most certainly not where they should be right now

My phone buzzed- a nagging irritant impeccably designed to disrupt an otherwise pefectly serene moment. I stopped pecking away at the document on my computer screen and glanced down at the text message lurking menacingly among the clutter of bleating news notifications.

“Hey- are you free to talk for a few minutes?”

I leant back in my chair, glancing left, right and forwards along the rows of desks crammed with LED screens and the wreckage of hastily emptied hand bags as people scrambled to get on their first teleconference of the day. Apart from the few chatting conspiritorially about last night’s mundane happenings down the pub while cramming muffins into their faces, the vast room looked like it always did.

The bizarre and self absorbed nerve centre of a national health service, in all its dank, mouse infested mundanity. Multiple floors of factory like, impossible-to-navigate post-modern monstronsity. A real disappointment for anyone expecting glamour and excitement.

Only by tuning in to the endless telephone chatter could you get a real sense that the place is in the business of healthcare. People staring blankly into the gloom of teleconferences or pacing the floor, sinews straining in an effort to get their urgency across to those listening, or not, on the other end of the line. A world so earnestly theatrical that you would be forgiven for thinking anyone actually gave a flying fuck about the people wandering around on the damp streets below. Real people abstracted and conceptualised as patients, talked about in fake terms, feigned compassion. For a few years now I had listened with both horror and amusement to people elucidating about stuff they would never really know, or really wanted to know- especially if it didn’t quite fit into an Excel sheet or neatly into a Powerpoint.

Except one day it would crash in on them uninvited. Life can be brutal and every day in that place I would scan for people whose faces betrayed their inner distress. And there they were. Harrowed, unkempt, irritable, distracted. I could usually only guess at what lay beneath- unless they shuffled over and nervously asked for my professional help.

But somewhere in that vast empire worked people whose life had just collapsed in on them following a careless car crash, a cancer diagnosis, a stroke, loss of a child, the onset of dementia, or a perfectly natural death. The real stuff. The stuff I had seen with my own eyes, and at some point had to care for. The lurid chaos that unfolds when life wrestles free from our arrogant attempts at control.

Some of worst offenders are what I fondly refer to as clinical refugees. A rarified bunch of hapless individuals, jaded by years on the shop floor, denuded of their humanity by the trauma of flailing around inside a hopelessly complex machine.

Like me they sought asylum in this holiest of temples, trying to steer the machine they couldn’t even fix when they had real power to make a difference and still retained their skills like artisan technicians and mechanics. Like me they were trying to be better versions of themselves while living in denial of the awful truth. Nothing they do now would really make a difference.

Those pompous beings confidently striding around in the Top Office above our heads, I realised now, would always ensure that we failed.

I’d like to think they don’t do this intentionally or out of malice, because they too are just people, troubled with their own fallabilities, who would one day rot into the sediments along with the rest of us. But even at my most optimistic, I know in all honesty that is total bullshit. I am amongst sociopaths. Well, literally beneath them most of the time.

My salvation is in recognising that their power is illusiory- in truth no one is in charge of nature and the life that fills our beings. On this basis our mission to fix the unfixable was always going to be doomed to fail.

I glanced back at the text message. I felt tired, my head hurt and I was filled with growing panic. Be cool. You know this. Its not the first time, nor will it be the last. ‘Yes but’, my mind screamed as I smiled at the lady opposite jabbering away into a headset. For a moment she smiled and eyes soared skywards.

“Sure ring when whenever you’re free.”

Concentation broken I went back to what I was doing but seething inside. Three floors up and you can’t be bothered doing this face to face? And you keep me waiting months to learn my fate? And when precisely did you think that is a good way to reward hard work, commitment and honesty? What little respect I had left crumbled away and my bile began pouring out.

“Hey- how are you?”

“I’m good thanks. You?” Stay calm, you idiot.

“Just wanted to follow up on the interview..”

“Sure.” Stay calm, you idiot. Don’t say too much. You always say too much.

“So..and there’s no easy way of saying this..thing is..well..err you were not sucessful. I know, you know your stuff but you gave us nothing..we had nothing to go on..And, well the other candidate was much more suited to err..”

Well that’s awkward if I may say so..

“Mind if I ask who it is?”

“What?”

“Who did you appoint..the person who is more qualified and knows more about my stuff than I do?”

“Thing is – look I know this is a bit of a shock and not what you were hoping for..you need to take time to reflect..and err..well we can talk at some point..”

Bit of a shock? Reflect? I don’t need to reflect – I am devastated- you just executed me with two days’ notice..you idiot.

“Err yes sure, bit devastated to be honest..err..well thanks. Can I have some feedback please? Curious to know how I could have done better?”

“The thing is we are still in this process..so err we.. err look we want to be transparent in this but err..well-look I’m really sorry I have to take another call. Let’s talk when it all settles down..ok and err sorry”.

The last “sorry” emphasised the ‘oh’ a bit too much for my liking- patronising and aloof..no, smug. Like- ‘I’m sorry we had to fuck up your life but hey at least we are all ok..so run along now..go on..GO!’

And that is how it’s done.

30 years in health care..nearly four at the top of my game, widely and openly acknowledged by my peers as someone who had actually made a big difference to part of the system that no one else could get a handle on. Changed national health policy in a good way- probably for a very long time.

Summarily executed.

I got up, walked slowly out of the office, turned left by the lifts, entered the gents toilet and vomited profusely.