Category: Rants

No. Well…yes, but I am honestly trying to tell you that I don’t think I was being clear with you before. In fact, I think I was being a pretty lousy teacher. Look, I think putting one in the win” column every now and then is what gives us the juice to keep plugging along in games that we know deep down we’re not gonna win. And that’s why I locked in so intensely to that patient. Because opportunities, they…God, they come along so rarely in this place. And when they do, you just can’t let them slip through your fingers. You cannot. You know?”

Look, I hate to question your three years of wisdom, but your pain guy is just like a million other drug addicts walking the hospitals every year with their aches, and their pains, and their spasms, and their cramps, and their myalgia, and their neuralgia, and their otalgia, and their every other -algia they can possibly think of just so they can get a fix.

Lindsay, by you reaching the level of attending physician, you have somehow managed to become a member of a club that I belong to. Obviously there was no vote. Because if there had been, you would still hear the sound of my voice screaming, Nay, nay, oh, dear God, one thousand times nay!” That being said, it’s my obligation to let you in on the organization’s one and only bylaw: We’re men. The women are men. The children are men. The men – of course – men! So, I went ahead and took the liberty of making you five Man Cards. Hold them very dear, because every time you drop the ball, man-wise, I’m going to take one from you.”

A coffee place in a hospital? What’s next, Bob, an ice cream parlor in the morgue? Admittedly not a horrible idea, seeing as the freezers are already down there, plus it’ll be a perfect place for kids — one of our famous vanilla malteds definitely takes the sting out of having to identify the freshly charred remains of your father!

Oh, I heard the sad sigh, I see your shoulders are slumped, and I’m aware that you have some whiny-ass problem that you want to talk to me about because you probably think it’d be cathartic to get it the hell off your chest but believe me it won’t be. What you’ve got to do, for me, is the healthy thing. Keep all of your feelings bottled up inside where they *so* belong!

Newbie! Let me – let me tell you a little story. It starts every day at 5 in the morning — which is just about the time that you’re setting your hair for work – when I am awakened by a sound: Is that a cat being gutted by a fishing knife? Nooo! That’s my son. He’s hungry and he’s got a load in his pants so big that I’m actually considering hiring a stable boy. But, I go ahead and dig in; because I do love the lad and, well gosh, you know me, I’m a giver. And I’m off to the hospital, where my cup runneth over with both quality colleagues, such as yourself, and a proverbial clown-car full of sick people. But, what the hey, my pay is about the same as guys who break rocks with other rocks and I only have to work three or four hundred hours a week, so, so far I’m a pretty happy camper! And then I head back home where I’m greeted by the faint musk of baby vomit in a house that used to smell like, well…nothing! Nothing! Nothing! I-i-in fact it used to smell like nothing at all. And all I want to do before I restart this whole glorious cycle is, you know, maybe lay on the couch and have a beer and watch some SportsCenter and, if I’m not too sweaty from the day’s labors, stick my hand right down my pants, buuut apparently that’s not in Jordan’s definition of pulling your weight”.

You’re more interested in being right than doing what’s right! And I just couldn’t take it! Can’t take it anymore!

Because I told him to. And I know what you’re thinking, Dorothy: Why would I have your intern call you in on one of your very precious days off for something so gosh-darn trivial? Well, the real question ought to be, Why when you were an intern did you call me in time after time after time after time! So, now, to commemorate the first of many unnecessary disruptions of your life, I’ve invited Laverne’s church choir here to summarize my feelings in exuberant song.

Blondie! He is private practice. Those guys are cocky jackasses who don’t give two shakes about anybody else’s opinion but their own. They’re…they’re me, with one addendum: They’re whores. And I’m not talking about the good kind of whores like my ex-wife. They’re whores for money.

Well, gosh, Newbie, I don’t know what it was about that day. Maybe I hadn’t had enough sleep. Maybe my mind was on other things. Maybe I didn’t have enough fiber in my diet, and I failed to do my morning business. I don’t know what the hell it was, but the bottom line is I didn’t feel like spelling it out for you. And I know, I know, you want your little speech, and that’s fine because here it is: You’re a doctor. You might get sick. Get over it.