Double Flee A

The other day my expertise was requested to help the pharmacists break into a cabinet containing vast quantities of narcotics. I usually try to ignore my surroundings at work to a point, because much in the same way that no one with two broken wrists likes to explain to every person they meet how they came to be broken, people at work like to do their jobs quietly and without fuss and egagement so they can leave more mental space for things they care about. In the case of the people working in the inpatient pharmacy, however, who enjoy watching and then discussing mindless Japanese cartoons at great length, I felt it was appropriate to inquire why the cabinet had been moved, rendering its functions of inventory useless. It turns out that a road used to run right through where the pharmacy is, and below that road had been pipes. Pipes, most likely, for transporting both clean and waste water. A mysterious substance began seeping up through the floor underneath the narcotic cabinet, and no records were available on the pipes, so no one knows what that stuff is. So in this hospital that is packed with patients praying for various organs to become available to save their lives, where bone marrow transplants are a daily occurrence, where the ill come when they are too ill to be absolutely anywhere else, there is a weird fluid bubbling from the floor in the pharmacy. Not comforting in any sense except that reality will come and find you wherever you are. Chaos is always where we didn't know to expect to find it.

posted by dale @ 7:11 PM