Chapter 33: Hospitality Demonstrated
I enjoyed a more flexible schedule at my day job than Kaitlyn, so we parted at the restaurant, me returning to the hospital with Miki to arrange the employment paperwork and suchlike.
There, Miki showed me the open therapy area, which was rather sparsely attended at this time of day. Then she showed me the two private therapy rooms, both of which had doors in the back wall.
“This button locks the other treatment room’s door, giving your patient full privacy in the changing room beyond. For safety, this door won’t lock after your patient, Davie, but you’d best have an awfully compelling reason to intrude, all right?”
I nodded, and she continued her tutorial, “Press the button, and several lights turn on: a small green one here above the door on this side, an ‘Exit’ sign above it on the other to guide the patient back to their therapy room, the overhead lights inside, and a small red light in the other therapy room to show the changing room’s occupied. The doors won’t unlock until someone in the green room releases the lock with another button press.”
“Cool!” I enthused, my inner tech geek rather impressed with this scheme. “How does it work?”
“Magnets, I think,” she responded with a vague wave of her hand. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to go talk to someone in Facilities.”
I pressed the button, and sure enough, I heard a quiet clunk through the wall separating this room from the other. A pastel green light came on above the door, and I opened it, noticing that the lights were on inside. Pressing the button again gave me another clunk, heard more clearly now with my head in the changing room; most of the overhead lights turned off, leaving only enough on for safety in case someone was still inside. Back in the therapy room, I saw that the green light on this side had gone out. I nodded in understanding, inferring from her comments and my experiments that the doors used a system of computer-controlled electromagnetic interlocks.
Miki took that as an acknowledgement that I was done playing with the tech toys, her mouth quirked up in an amused grin, and resumed her tour. “The patient changing room backs onto the staff one…”
We walked around a few corners until we stood before a doorless privacy zig-zag entrance, the same sort of arrangement as in a gym.
Miki paused there with a hand out toward me at waist height, listening. After a few moments, she explained, “The PT wing is one of the oldest parts of the hospital, though it’s one of the newest departments. See, when they built the new ICU several years back, primary care moved into their old space, and they created the PT department to move into that spot. This is their old changing room.”
History lesson delivered, she called inside, “Hello? Coming in!” We waited a few seconds more, heard no answer, so she said, “Come on, no one’s in there.”
We walked into the changing room, and I saw a small island of battered old lockers in the middle of the room that looked like they dated to the 1950s, two more sets lining the wall to the left of the door and around the corner from there. Past the center island of lockers, I saw a few toilet stalls and a urinal along the back wall.
In the rear right corner stood a pair of deep sinks, the medical kind with the long paddle style faucet handles, meant to be operated by the user’s elbows to avoid cross-contamination. There was a gap in that wall leading into another room, then a set of tall cabinets with much bigger doors than the lockers, which ended right at the entranceway we stood in.
The room was arranged asymmetrically, with more space to the right of the locker island, giving room for the large cabinet doors to open.
Surrounding the central locker island on three sides were long backless dressing benches, none on the open right side of the room, large gaps in the corners to let people weave around the benches as necessary.
I walked further inside toward the gap in the wall between the side-by-side medical sinks and the big cabinets and saw that the other room was a communal shower, clearly as old as the lockers judging by the style of its tiles and the color of the grout.
“Back when they built this hospital,” Miki explained, “there were no female doctors here in Southern Utah, so they didn’t bother to build a second changing room. Not like this one, I mean. There were female nurses and other support staff, of course, but they only got a single tiny room down the hall; in the renovation, I think they made it into a janitorial closet, its single shower stall now used to rinse out and refill mop buckets,” she said with an annoyed frown on her face.
“Anyway, this is the fancy changing room for all of the old-school doctors,” she said, sarcastically stretching the word “fancy.” With a smirk, she added, “There used to be a sign on the wall there, ‘Beard must be this long to enter.’”
I decided this last was mordant humor, so I laughed.
“Because there is just the one big changing room for the whole department now,” she went on, “and the PT staff is mixed-gender — there are actually more women than men on staff these days! — we have to share it. If you hear anyone showering, you either call out loudly enough that they can hear you under the shower noise or wait out in the hallway. If there is no shower noise, you announce yourself anyway there in the zig-zag as I did, and you only enter if there is no answer after several seconds or you get an invitation to enter. If someone’s in here and they don’t invite you in, you wait in the hall. No arguments. It’s a firing offense if you violate this rule. Same if you fail to announce yourself loudly enough or you don’t wait long enough before you enter and surprise someone.”
I nodded, adding, “And the nicer arrangements for the patients are because they’re paying the bills, whereas we’re just staff, right?”
“Bingo. Anyway, the full-time staff has assigned lockers around the perimeter,” she continued, and I nodded, seeing the nameplates on each one. “The lockers in the middle are for part-timers like yourself, and you just pick one without a lock at the start of each shift. You’ll need to bring your own lock, and you aren’t allowed to keep stuff in there beyond your shift, except that you’re allowed a locker while making use of the PT equipment for personal exercise. That’s best done early in the morning or late in the evening, by the way, since the equipment is for patient use first and foremost.”
“That’s quite the bennie,” I replied. “Kaitlyn can drop her gym membership. This’ll work quite well for me, too: my commute takes me right past here every day. Kaitlyn will have to go a few blocks out of her way, but she goes farther for her current gym already.” I didn’t tell Miki I was also glad my wife would no longer have to keep sneaking me into the gym as her spotter or heavy bag wrangler, since I’d never bothered to get a membership myself, considering my daily bike commute sufficient exercise.
Miki continued, “That brings us to the primary reason for this room, being to limit disease transmission.” With a wave of her hand toward the semi-enclosed communal shower room, she added, “We’ll expect you to shower thoroughly before and after each shift, and also to wash your hands between each patient.”
I decided this was my opening. “I should show you what I can do.”
“You really don’t have to.”
“Without that PTA qualification, of course I do! How else are you going to justify hiring us to the hospital board?”
“Well, okay…” she began, turning towards the entrance zig-zag, apparently to lead me back to the therapy room.
I said, “I should shower and get into a set of scrubs first.”
“I’m not worried about you being unclean.”
I cocked my head to the side and said, “I’m not offended, Miki. Y’all are right: one cannot be too sure about that sort of thing in a place like this. Besides, I don’t want to get massage oil on my clothes.”
She turned again to leave as I was undoing my cargo pants when I added, “You’re welcome to stay. In fact, it’s probably best if you do, to make sure I do it right.”
She pinked up a bit at this, speaking with a quaver that she barely managed to keep from tipping over into a nervous laugh, “You want me to watch you disrobe and shower?”
“Not in any exhibitionistic sort of way, no, but I also don’t mind, and as I said, you are here to train me, right?”
“Um, I guess… Maybe I should just go get one of the male staff?”
“Please yourself,” I told her, “but you should know that I’m a naturist, so I don’t mind you seeing me naked. Besides, aren’t we all healers of one sort or another? Bodies are our business! I doubt I’d be showing you anything you haven’t seen here in this building already.”
“Well, no…” she began.
I pulled my zipper down a centimeter, then waited for her to decide.
She finally nodded, so I turned to face the locker and continued removing my things and placing them into locker 42, which I was happy to find unoccupied. What can I say, I’m a huge Douglas Adams fan.
“We’ll skip the lock today, shall we?” I said, turning to find that her blush had deepened.
I walked naked past Miki into the communal showering room, noting that her eye-line fluttered up and down as I passed.
Under the spray, I flattered myself that Miki was enjoying the show, not just eyeing me critically to ensure that I did the thing right, but she didn’t say anything, just stood there in the doorway, arms folded, a tiny smile on her lips.
I inferred from her posture that leaning in doorways was frowned upon, probably for sanitation reasons again. So many rules!
Once I felt sufficiently clean, I wiped the water from my eyes, looked a question at her, and she nodded her acceptance, so I walked dripping out into the changing area and asked, “Towels?”
She pointed me at a pair of cabinet doors to the left of the shower room.
On opening the one she indicated, I found a stack of fresh towels, dried off, and tossed it into the nearby hamper.
At a guess, I opened the other door and found that it contained the scrubs, as I’d expected.
My uncertainty must’ve shown on my face, because Miki said, “The best fit for your figure is probably a Large, skinny as you are, but your height will require you to take one of the XL sets instead, which will drown you.” She shrugged, adding, “Sucks, but that’s the nature of scrubs. I’m the same way: if I take a Small, it fits my body well but leaves my ankles exposed, so I have to take a Medium instead to get full coverage.”
I was reaching for a hanger on the bottom rod when Miki interrupted quietly, “Stop. You can’t touch the scrubs until you wash your hands, those being the last two steps before leaving. That means no carrying the scrubs back to your locker, Davie.”
I was initially confused, since I’d just washed my hands along with everything else, but then I got it. “Oh, I see, you’re expecting me to wear these over my clothes?”
“Ah,” Miki replied, looking bemused, “yes, that, or at least your underwear.”
I shrugged, pursed my mouth, then asked, “Wouldn’t I contaminate my hands by going back to the locker?”
Uncertainly, Miki replied, “Sure, which is why you wash your hands again before leaving.”
I asked, “Is there any rule about going commando? It works for me.”
She thought a bit, then said with a quirk to her mouth, “I suppose not. Do continue.”
I pulled out a set of scrub pants marked XL and slipped them on, which cooled Miki’s face both by half-concealing myself and also because we were moving more solidly into her area of expertise.
“Too short,” she judged, pointing down at my ankles. “Toss those in the hamper. Never put anything back into these cabinets, Davie; only the laundry people are allowed to do that. There’s not much infectious disease here in PT land, but we have to follow the overall hospital rules regardless. Now get an XL set like I told you the first time.”
I thought I had, but after pulling them back off, I looked at the tag — L — then at the XL-tagged hanger and commented, “Improperly hung,” while showing the discrepant labels to her.
When her eyes dipped and her amused smile returned, I guessed she was thinking about well-hung things, but she covered by sighing and observing, “Yeah, the laundry people do that sometimes.”
I only smiled back as I turned and retrieved another pair of XL-marked scrub pants from the still-open cabinet, double-checking the label inside the waistband this time. On a hunch, I turned rapidly as I pulled my selection from the cabinet, finding her eyes stuck to my buns.
With my own amused smile, I pointed at the label and announced, “XL.”
Her eyes still re-centering after their up-flick, she replied, “Ah, good,” with a nervous quaver.
I was contemplating all of this worry over cloth touching bodies and infection transmission while getting the second set of scrub pants on, thinking, “It would be better if I just showered off, then worked nude.”
Miki laughed, coloring again.
I asked as I pulled the other leg on, “Did I say that aloud?”
“Yeah, and you can’t,” she said through her chortles. “Streaking the halls is also a firing offense, I’m afraid.”
“Are you sure?” I asked with a smirk. “Double-check that and get back to me, okay?”
“Sure, sure, if I find that you’re allowed to work nude, I’ll certainly let you know,” she said drolly.
Through this banter, I got my scrub top on, realizing that this outfit ruled out doing magic in the hospital. Well, I didn’t need magic to do my patients some good. For any that required anything beyond what I could do with PT, we’d just have to take them on as massage therapy clients, either instead or in addition.
Miki nodded her acceptance of my scrub top’s fit, which I assumed was because she couldn’t see my forearms, so I retrieved a set of shoe covers from the cabinet, slipping them on over my bare feet. On looking up at her, she just shook her head slightly in amusement, which I took to be acceptance again.
Miki said, “The other stuff in that cabinet you won’t usually need: gloves, masks, hair caps, and such. We’ll tell you when a patient requires special handling. It’s pretty rare to have PT patients that also have Double Turbo Diphtheria.”
I grinned wryly in response to her joking tone, then walked over to the sink beside the shower entrance in my slippered feet, and she regained her expert mien, showing me by example how to properly wash my hands, demonstrating proper technique with the other sink, talking me through the steps as I tried to mirror her actions. I thought I knew how to wash my hands, but I found out that day that I was wrong, wrong, wrong!
When we walked out of the changing room, another person in scrubs was sitting on the short bench across from the entrance. She stood as we exited, clearly waiting on us to finish in there before she entered, either hearing my shower or our voices, not interrupting us.
“Alice, this is Davie Bhat,” she said, introducing me. “Davie, Ms. Fisher, MPT, one of our full-time staff.”
She bowed formally to me in the East Asian style, and I returned a formal Indian bow, adding, “Namaste,” which I felt appropriate, given my birth culture.
“We try to avoid handshakes around here,” Miki explained. “Pathogen transmission is always on our minds. Bowing is the most common form of personal greeting here, but you’ll find that some of the goofier staff will do something else, like a salute or a foot bump.”
“Foot bump?” I asked, confused. I’d gotten saluting down through Hollywood-mediated acculturation, but what in the name of Thompson’s left big toenail was a foot bump?
Miki balanced on her left foot, extended the other in front of her, and looked at me expectantly.
Suffused now in the warm glow of a minor ray of enlightenment, I extended my own right foot, and she tapped it on one side with hers, then on the other. “Foot bump,” she explained redundantly.
“Silly, yes, but fun,” I judged, and she smiled, clearly slotting me in amongst the goofy staff.
“Good to meet you, Ms. Fisher,” I said, and she just smiled as we traded places in the hallway, she going into the now-unoccupied changing room, we on our way back to the private therapy room.
As we walked, I guessed, “MPT is Master of Physical Therapy?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Miki said. “It’s something of an obsolete degree these days, the US medical establishment splitting things into two tiers, people like those you aspire to join with the PTA supervised by people like me with the full DPT. You find the in-between degrees like BPT and MPT mainly in the older generations, as with Alice.”
I made an inference, then asked, “Should I be calling you Doctor, then?”
“If you do that outside a formal setting, I’ll give you all the crankiest patients for a solid week. I firmly believe that respect is in actions, Davie, not in titles. So yeah, I hold a doctorate, but you will listen to what I tell you because I’m good at what I do, not because I got a pricey diploma once upon a time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Tolerable, but I still prefer Miki,” she said briskly as she opened the therapy room door for me.
I raised my eyebrow at this deferential gesture, but rather than comment further, I essayed a version of my practiced massage opening spiel.
“Good,” she critiqued, “but call it therapy rather than massage.”
I nodded, and she continued, “Normally, our front desk staff will have the patient’s record up on this screen here,” pointing at a small computer monitor on a counter, “and I or another of the senior staff will read it and direct you as to what work the patient needs.”
We then discussed HIPAA, medical ethics, and other topics. I ended it by saying, “I understand. Kaitlyn and I swore a modified Hippocratic Oath on a spot holy to us nearby, with witnesses. We will uphold the rules and regulations while working here.” I chose not to tell her that our oath differed in some ways from her institutional rules, but really, that was no business of hers, now was it?
Miki looked impressed by this declaration but just said, “Well, you wanted to show me what you can do…”
“Absolutely.”
With a nod, she said, “Okay then, in lieu of a patient work order, how about you just give me a normal therapeutic massage, the generic sort you do in your practice when the client has no particular wishes, all right? I’ll judge your skill on that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, once again returning her to the role of virtual patient. “If you’ll just get showered up and changed, I’ll prepare the room.”
I pressed the electronic door button and held the door open for her, letting it fall gently closed on its pneumatic mechanism once she was inside.
With Miki out of the room, I realized that she hadn’t told me anything about where to find sheets and such, so I searched the cabinetry, quickly familiarizing myself with their contents as the sound of running water began in the other room.
Shortly after I had the padded therapy table tightly sheet-covered, Miki re-emerged, fully towel-wrapped, and I helped her up onto the table. Once I had her up there, I untucked the towel into a loose but chaste tent, explaining what I was doing just as they’d taught us in school, then proceeded to give her a thorough full-body massage, being careful to keep her chastely draped as I worked.
When I’d finished, I said in my professional therapist’s voice, “That’s all the time we have for now, ma’am. Let me help you down, and you can re-dress. Please check with the front desk before you leave, and have a wonderful day.”
She replied languidly, “That massage… What’d Jasper say your company name was, Magic Hands something?”
“Magic Hands Massage,” I confirmed with a smile. “Despite there being no vowels, it’s an acronym, not an initialism, because you pronounce it as a satisfied Mmmm-hmmm!”
Miki laughed at this, then said, “Mmmm-hmmm! I most definitely am satisfied, Davie. I can barely stand straight, I’m so loose.”
She had her hand on the changing room door latch when she turned and said, “Did you want to come in with me? Fair’s fair, yeah?”
“I, ah, don’t really see any medical reason that I need to do that, ma’am,” I said, resuming my trained therapist’s voice.
Miki nodded, smiling, and I decided that I’d passed a sort of test. She dropped into lecture mode, saying, “There actually are cases where someone would need supervision in there, none of which currently apply to me. Basically, whenever one of the full-time staff judges that the patient is sufficiently infirm that they could fall, have a cardiac event, or similar, one of us will go in to keep an eye on them in case they need help. There’s a small chance we’ll send one of you therapists in there instead; in that eventuality, you keep your eyes averted and try to become invisible unless and until they need help.”
I replied, “Got it Miki. I assume I could even end up needing to help such a person shower?”
“Yes,” she replied, “but only if they ask for help. You can offer, but if the answer is no, hands and eyes off. Monitor shy patients with your ears only.”
“Of course,” I agreed. Then in a more personal tone, I added, “My invitation to use the staff changing room while I’m in there is always open to you or to any of the rest of the staff. The same goes for Kaitlyn, I’m sure. In fact, we’ll likely be in there together anytime our scheduled start or end times overlap.”
“Keep it chaste, and you’ve got a deal,” she said, holding a hand out to me.
“You’ve got it, boss,” I replied, shaking it, then guessed, “Hanky-panky is a firing offense?”
“Damn straight it is,” she said, then disappeared through the green-lit door.