This assignment asks us to use a setting as a character/a pervasive presence. 

Mabel’s New Best Friend

The smell of stale macaroni and cheese under a heat lamp mixed with the scent of industrial cleaner in the hospital cafeteria was a familiar musty stench that Dr. Mabel Sun had grown used to. She grabbed a granola bar and a chocolate pudding cup from the counter and brushed her greasy bangs off to the side. The grey industrial cafeteria had been bustling with the dinner crowd two hours before, but Mabel found herself eating alone. The booth’s vinyl seat cushions exhaled puffs of air as she shuffled her butt across the broken lining.

            The best part of my day, she thought, as she cracked open the chocolate pudding cup. She inhaled the sweet sticky smell of high fructose satisfaction. She couldn’t get a date with a hot Marine, but she could get pudding.

            Beep beep beep! Mabel reflexively shut the beeper off with her left hand as she used her right hand to shovel a spoonful of rubbery chocolate pudding into her mouth.

“X4359.” The beeper message read. That was her senior resident’s phone extension.

A dollop of chocolate slid off the spoon and landed on the lapel of her white-ish lab coat.

Shit. Of all the colors she could have stained her coat with, it had to be the color of shit.

           

            Mabel sighed, her mouth full of chocolate pudding. Most likely, it was Matt, her senior resident, paging her about a new admission for the hospital team on-call. She picked up her Spectralink phone and dialed the extension.

            “Hey,” Matt said, “Got a fun case for you.”

“Ooo! I love the smell of gangrene in the morning,” she replied.

            The patient was a forty-five year-old white male with Stage Four Rectal Cancer. He arrived in the ER with “a severe obstruction of the lower colon.” In layman’s terms, “there was a giant tumor blocking the exit to the poop shoot.” Mabel would have to insert a rectal tube into the patient’s holiest of holies; then inject saline and withdraw whatever contents of the rectum would come out peacefully.

Click.

If she hadn’t been in the middle of eating chocolate pudding, Mabel would have been more enthusiastic about doing this new procedure. This was going to involve equipment and a lot of lube.

She walked quickly down the hallway, the hem of her coat floating behind her. Her reflex hammer clanged like a metronome with each step against the metal part of her stethoscope. At this hour, half of the fluorescent lights gave the hallway a ghostly vibe amid the hum of nurses quietly going over issues that were passed down from the day shift. Patients were “tucked in” for the night instead of wandering the halls with the physical therapists. There was an occasional beeping of machines and pneumatic “puffsssttt” of blood pressure cuffs.

This is what purgatory must look like, Mabel thought.

            She reached the patient’s room and took a deep breath and put her “professional doctor” face on so that her new patient would not have to see the “I just horked down a giant cup of my favorite chocolate pudding” face. The patient was in the bed, lying on his left side. The room was lit with a warm glow from a bedside lamp rather than the usual overhead lights, which usually cast a sickly green glow over the entire room. Unfortunately, it smelled like a man dying amidst the scent of industrial cleaning products. He had probably vomited earlier. Mabel mouth-breathed, closed the door and smiled.

            “Hi, Mr. Schofield. My name is Dr. Sun and I’ll be helping you out today.”

            He turned his head up and said “Ahhhh, so you got the short straw today.”

            Mabel could make out deep dimples in the outline of his face along with a tube coming out of his nose to empty the stomach. She walked around so he would not have to twist his body to see her.

            “Mr. Schofield-“
            “Call me Ron.”

            “Ron, I’m here to help you out today.” Mabel moved a chair closer to the bedside. “If anything, I hope you don’t end up feeling like you drew the short straw.”

            Ron laughed and then gasped as his belly cramped. He took a few deep breaths and was calm again.

            Mabel sat in front of him. “So tell me your story.”

Ron looked at the wall. “Well, don’t yell at me, but I hate goin’ to the doctors.”

“Nah, I worry about people who love going to the doctors.” Mabel clicked her pen and flipped open a small spiral pad.

“Fair ‘nuff,” Ron chuckled. “I never got my colonoscopy like my mom said I had to. Then my bleedin’ got so bad, I finally had to go and see someone. Next thing I know, they tell me I have three months to live. I’d prefer three weeks, personally. This shit sucks. Literally.”

Ron also smoked a pack of Camels a day and drank “probably more than you should”. He lived with a man named Zeke, when he wasn’t traveling all over Asia for work. It had been twelve years since he saw a doctor. The radiation treatments didn’t help much and he was going to be talking to the hospice service in the morning.

Mabel proceeded to examine his belly.

            Tap tap tap. It produced a hollow sound. Ron grimaced.

            Mabel went to the supply room at the end of the hall and came back with a basin, gloves, a rectal tube, KY Jelly, a jug of warmed sterile saline and a syringe. She set the equipment on the other side of the bed away from Ron. While they waited for Matt to come by and supervise Mabel, Ron chatted to her about his last meal in Asia. He paused every five minutes or so to grimace while his stomach cramped up with gas pains.

            Finally, the door opened and Matt whisked himself into the room.

            “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Schofield. I’m Dr. Cabrera.” He looked over at the pile of supplies. “Got everything, Mabel?”

            They assembled the apparatus, quietly reviewing what the steps were. Mabel could smell his cologne. Her nose tingled all the way down to her shoes.

“Just try to relax.” Matt patted Mabel on the shoulder.

“You heard him, Ron? He wants you to relax.” Mabel joked.

            Ron took deep breaths like a woman in labor as they inserted the tube.

            A loud warm burst of gas came out of the end of the rectal tube. Success. Another flush of saline and there was another warm flush of liquid stool.

Ron groaned a sigh of relief. “You. You are my new best friend.”

Mabel laughed and tried not to dislodge the slippery rectal tube. Fortunately the only brown stain on her white coat was still from chocolate pudding. Ron’s face relaxed. Matt’s beeper went off.

“You’re good. Page me when you’re done.” He slapped Mabel on the back and left quickly to the hallway outside.

Ron yelped.

Mabel had to withdraw the tube. She had gotten rid of some of the pain, but Ron’s belly remained full. The rest of Mr. Schofield’s medical plan would lie in the evaluation and treatment of the hospice team. For now, he would get morphine through a line inserted into his veins. 

“Doc?” Ron was resting in the bed, eyes closed.
            “Yes?”
            “Thank you. You’re still my new best friend.”

“You’re welcome.” Mabel played with a button on her coat. “Good luck with everything, Mr. Schofield. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Doc.”

Suddenly, Mabel’s eyes and nose were stinging. She took some deep breaths and walked out of the room.

She thought about the lonely studio apartment waiting for her at the end of the shift. Her friends were all starting families. Matt was faithfully married. It had been a long time since Mabel had been someone’s best friend. Another three days and she’d have to do the 32-hour shift all over again- probably powered by another cup of chocolate pudding. She saw herself alone at the end of her life, submitting to endless procedures after eating a lifetime’s worth of chocolate pudding cups. Mabel went to the nearest bathroom, closed the door to the stall, sat on the toilet and covered her eyes with wads of toilet paper to catch her tears.

Beep beep beep. Another fun case.