Page 10 of Rules of the Heart

Even Ella was a bit surprised at how well her new system worked. By lunchtime, they had almost gotten through the entire waiting room. When evening came, there were only two patients who had yet to be seen.

“Don’t worry, I’ll lock up,” she told Dr. Johnson, a resident in the psychiatry department who also volunteered regularly and was in charge of locking up for the night. “I just want to see these two patients.”

“I’ll stay a little later, too, and we can each see one. I can’t believe we got through everyone. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

Everyone had been invigorated and inspired by how well the new system worked. It showed in their work, too. People were more efficient when they felt empowered, like they were swimming rather than drowning.

Ella saw her last patient and waved to Dr. Johnson as she left. This was brilliant. Surely, when Valerie looked at the numbers, she would agree.

4

Valerie

After a solid week with no days off, Valerie was looking forward to her weekend. She would take Saturday morning off to go to the gym and spend the afternoon working in the clinic. Saturday afternoons were always manic, and they could use all the volunteers they could get.

When she arrived in the clinic, Valerie was surprised to see the waiting room much emptier than usual. She was halfway through seeing her first patient when she realized that the doctors to either side of her had already seen three patients in the time she had seen one. How were they doing it? They had better not be slacking or cutting corners; that’s how people died.

After she was done with her patient, Valerie didn’t take on a new one just yet. She paused to watch, and she was horrified by what she saw.

“Doctor Johnson! What are you doing?”

“Um… I don’t understand. What do you mean, Doctor Bush?”

“May I speak to you in private?”

Valerie drew Dr. Johnson away from her patient and out of earshot. “You just skipped the entire patient questionnaire and went straight to treating him!”

“What are you talking about? I did everything on the questionnaire.”

Doctor Johnson showed Valerie a small slip of paper, which had just four questions on it, rather than the list of over thirty that it was supposed to be.

“What is that? Where’s the proper, full-length questionnaire?”

“We dispensed with it in favor of the new system. I—wait, did you not approve this?”

Things started to click together in Valerie’s head. “Who gave you this new questionnaire?”

“It was Doctor Ashton.”

“I knew it,” Valerie hissed.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you hadn’t approved it. I thought Ella said you did, though now I’m thinking back to it, I never actually heard her say that. I guess we all just assumed that she had your permission for the change.”

Valerie resisted the urge to snap at Dr. Johnson when it really wasn’t her fault. This was all on Ella.

“Bring back the old protocols at once. I never authorized this … this disaster waiting to happen.”

“But, Doctor Bush, it’s working.”

“What?” Valerie snapped.

“Look at the waiting room. Have you ever seen it this empty? We’ve seen all the patients who came in every day this week, and we haven’t had a single bad outcome because of the new system.”

Valerie wanted to dismiss Dr. Johnson’s argument out of hand, but she couldn’t deny that the waiting room did indeed seem emptier than usual.

“Show me the numbers of patients in and out, as well as their charts. I want to see everything.”

If a mistake had been made, Valerie would find it, and then she would have Ella. If Ella had compromised patient care, Valerie could get her fired for this.

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