are you afraid to die?

short story about doctor and interpreter

On her left hand she wears her wedding ring, which for me is just a big ordinary clear stone set in a white gold or platinum band that looked like it came from a bubble gum machine. Dr. Patel is in her mid-thirties with shiny dark hair and caramel skin and has a thick accent which I identify as from India.  She doesn't move her head as some Indians do when they speak. Her dark lustrous hair was a contrast with her pristine white robe. It's the type of hair that is sold in beauty stores for hundreds of dollars but hers has a couple of grays.

The pavilion clinic is fast paced and always overbooked not as much as a women’s health clinic, which because of the high demand, was forced to open the clinic on Saturday. At least the Ambulatory Care Pavilion is open from Monday to Friday. The infinite list of patients seems to create a never ending working day. At the end of the day your throat is dry. I always find myself drinking more than 32 ounces of water. 

Sometimes I believe the doctors are in competition with who in their area sees more patience.  Dr. Patel has the most Spanish speakers. How do I know? Because she doesn’t stop calling me and as a matter of fact she brings a chair. Once she has me she tries to leave me in her room.  She instructs the staff to arrange all the spanish speakers one after another in order to use me nonstop and not lose me to another doctor. 

There have been cases where I received a message on my beeper from my office to call my manager and it's that there is another doctor looking for me and they cannot find me. My manager then has to call the doctor and explain that I am in another room. I don't blame any doctor for holding the interpreter. We are one interpreter covering two clinics and the option of  phone interpretation is difficult and delays service because they have to go back and forth. 

Sometimes they don't understand the accent or see the expression of the patients. Phone interpretation is the last resort for a care provider and patient. They just don't like it. Companies that provide phone interpretation guarantee accurate interpretation but I have heard some interpretations which don't make any sense. They are monitored for quality assurance. Their pay is very low compared to us and they do not have the benefits that we do such as health insurance and other perks since we are city employees. 

In a neighborhood where half of the population is hispanic we’re definitely short staffed. There are cases which require in person interpreters such as delicate news about family members or bad news of health. When it is to deliver bad news such as death, a person interpreter is more compassionate and more clear than a phone interpreter.

Dr. Patel will not breathe while asking a question when they call to make an assessment. I know doctors speak fast but sometimes it gives us the impression that they are testing some of us to keep us on our toes. I cannot stand this. 

One time, I stopped her and she complained. I know I speak fast, but other interpreters keep up with me. I couldn’t believe her disrespect. What does she believe, that I am a peasant or her servant? Can you believe this?  If she knows that means that they just figured it out. Besides, it's not a race here where doctors see more patients. You will still have a lot of patients to see, all day until 5pm or more. We are stuck here until the last minute.  We are not scheduled by a number of appointments and then we can leave. For this reason, I don’t know the rush to see them all. You still have a long day. But I guess it's the same feeling that I had when I was answering the phone for a company when I was  young. I just wanted to end every single call as soon as possible. The feeling is agonizing, draining and frustrating. I don't like to do the same thing over and over again. Repetition is absolutely dreary. This is why I like and prefer walking around the hospital and to be on call.

 Each interpretation is unpredictable.  Anyway, most of them are, so it doesn't matter. In the clinic there is always variation. You never know ahead what each situation is about. The routine in the pavilion is the intake.  It reminds me of when I was a phone operator in that hellish place. One call after another non-stop. It was truthful draining. I did it to save money but it was time consuming and not worth my time and effort. Most people there were horrible. There are always good people no matter the place but that place was something else. Customer service is the last position a person with dignity and ambition wants to work in. 

There was a team leader who was polite, resourceful and healpful and one day I learned that he was arrested for murder and it wasn’t his first felony. Go figure. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I had gotten in a heated argument with him or someone else did. To anyone who asks me what kind of job to get when you are studying and it’s your first time working, I would say to get training in something that you know will move you forward. 

I jumped to customer service thinking that I would like to give information and help people. It was naive but most of the time it’s true. There are moments when it is just stressful, for example, working with a murderer and other entitled disrespectful people who believe that we are servants and they can disrespect us. 

When I was eighteen years old I worked in customer service at a Blockbuster store in Carolina, Puerto Rico, 30 minutes from home. I always loved movies and watched almost everything and anything. I also worked as a phone operator for pay vacations, books, clothes and my phone. I started working when I was fourteen years old at summer jobs back in my hometown in Puerto Rico. I liked it as a matter of fact. My first job was at the town hopital doing immunization registration. It was close to home, easy and awesome. This is far from what I have dealt as customer service over the phone with other companies. 

There are many tools online that will get you good employment, and will weed out criminals and low life people. So this doctor and others like her remind me of when you are absolutely disgusted doing the same thing every day. I guess this is not what she expected when becoming a doctor. Being a customer service provider with a licence in health.  

Dr. Patel tries to decorate her outfits with colors, so they don't look bland. Most of the doctors that do this are new to the field. Older practitioners barely wear makeup; this is young physicians’ banality of the youth. She wears makeup, perfume and jewelry. No dangling earrings but her perfume is just strong enough to give me a headache. I asked her once what perfume she was wearing and she said to me “Oh thank you the name is la vie est belle”.  The name in english means “life is beautiful”.  It might be nice to her but when she wears it I get a headache. After smelling all types of odors around the hospital I end up with a bloated brain. It hurts my nose and I feel my brain throbbing. 

She just stays until the end of her shift in her office while I run from clinic to clinic. I didn't ask her as a compliment but she said “thank you”. I will never forget it. I would never buy it even as a gift. I know now that perfume smells too floral and strong for me. As a matter of fact, it would give me unpleasant memories which provoked headaches. Patients and coworkers are not supposed to smell perfume. Some people are allergic. That's what my boss and the contract said.  I guess body odor or the s**t, vomit, ulcers, pus, blood that congest the Emergency Room and other clinics don’t count. 

After becoming accustomed to those odors I will never complain about the subway odor or the dumpster. There is no more abhorrent smell than humans. But either way, I prayed that she would forget the next day or that I was moved to another clinic. At some point I mentioned it to my boss. She said she would intervene in some way if it's necessary or move me to another department.  It wasn’t necessary at that point. I didn’t see her often. I just sat back far from her and when I walked by her I held my breath. 

My boss in the beginning was nice, like everyone who comes into your life. As a matter of fact, in the end she wasn’t that bad either. I have flaws but I tried to get along with everyone else especially since mortality was palpable. My differences with her and with some co-workers were mainly that I needed to travel and take my days off and my boss didn’t understand that nor did I expect her to understand it.  

I knew that I would not stay at that job for the rest of my life or for long. I couldn't  continue experiencing walking among death on a daily basis. I was in need of escape and to travel around the world. Why wait? Tomorrow is not a promise as everyone with a death sentence tells me. It doesn't matter the age, once they have a death prediction, they understand that everything is just shallow. Shoes, clothes, cars, everything material. The only thing that matters are family or close friends and personal achievement. 

Some patients even reflect that even their descendants will continue life after them and no one after their generation will remember them. Memories die and legacy dies with them. If death doesn’t humble you, I can’t help you to understand the uncertainty of life. 

Most of the doctor’s questions are based on symptoms, blood in the urine, foam, any diarrhea, and dizziness. It’s repetitive and just becomes a pattern. From time to time she goes back and looks at the patience. 

While we were assessing one patient an alarm went off. In that same week there had been an active shooter somewhere in the country. She kept her cool and I guessed she saw my eyes. I panicked  for a moment although I knew this was something that she hospital does to check that their system is working. 

“Are you scared?” she asked me. 

“Are you not?”

 She continued “We all  are going to die”. 

“I have goals in life and I am not done yet. There is too much to live and to see, less to die by the hands of a sociopath, but good thing that you told me that because I know now that I can use you as a shield.” 

She laughed and then she was curious about my goals. 

“What else do you want to do?” 

 I am my grandfather’s wild dreams so I have to push the envelope. My grandfather didn't  have an education like I have. He worked in a cane sugar plantation, never traveled and before him they didn't speak Spanish. I am here working as an interpreter in New York City on my own without my family or my best friend helping me. What I do know about my grandfather is that he was mathematically gifted in math. That is impressive from someone who just had basic education. In that period they just attended school for reading and writing then would just go off to work and help the family. I saw the census and he had answered that he didn't know english. This makes me accomplish more in life. 

There are too many things to explore and to do. I never thought I would be working in a hospital. That I would be living in New York. I didn't plan this. I asked her, “Do you still have goals or this is the end for you?”.

Author's Note

Thank you for you time. I welcome Any feedback good or bad.
This is a piece of my short story collection.

Reviews

[Jean Lagace]

agobiating... don't know that word. Apart from that, I like this longer work. Are you writing a bio? You were born in Porto Rico and you live in New York city. You work as an interpreter. I would have thought everybody back there talk English. Or perhaps the story is situated somewhere else.

[tyruswarwick]

Here ins New York there is a lot of people who do not speak english. People who have low skill jobs, here is a civil right to have language access.

[Jean Lagace]

Hello tyruswarwick
I know what I am suggesting will look a bit daft and preposterous.
I wrote a book. Its a novel. It will be publish soon in the United State. I would like to find myself a volunteer for reading the work. It is 150,000 words. The revision has been done. It tooks me 100 hours. The material has been sent back to the publisher. They might ask me for my final approval within the next 4 weeks. What I would like to get is some reaction by a real reader. To thank him for his trouble, I propose to put him in the book. Secondary character with his full name and sufficient description to make sure his mother or spouse will recognize him or her. [email protected] www.jeanlagace.ca