A Work Story That I Lived And Still Find Tough To Believe

Work can sometimes lead to other things, things that even after living them you find hard to believe. It can be a soap-operatic nightmare.

Where I Was 25 Years Ago

From age 23 to age 25, I worked in security. It was a crazy time to be a security officer. The mid-90s was a different era. Taking the job made sense as it was in line with what I ultimately hoped (at the time) to accomplish.

I was assigned to a medium-sized hospital facility in the center of town. When it comes to location, it was the location that kept us so busy. It allowed me to see quite a bit as I learned how to deal with the public. Handling the public was easy. Dealing with the divergent staff and internal issues was complicated.

During that time, I learned a great deal about our local medical community. I was always able to work with anyone. I could get along with most people. I wasn’t lacking in confidence and entered the job with a good working knowledge of dealing with a crisis. This gave me an advantage.

After the first year, I had quickly ascended to the position of site supervisor, which in this case gave me the rank of Lieutenant. I’d also met and fallen deeply in (what I thought at the time) love with a woman named Beth.

What Had I Gotten Myself Into

Certain professions are going to stick together. I always knew that. My brief interlude as a volunteer police officer and my time as an intern had introduced me to the tightest brotherhood in the history of any profession. Keep this in mind, it was before the current era. But, what I was going to find, was that the Doctors were the absolute worst.

Dating outside of my league in a building full of women had irritated some of the lothario doctors in the place. Certainly, this made my life a bit more complicated. Suddenly, rather than dating the doctors, the nursing staff was paying far too much attention to the team of security staff I’d worked with the company to bring into the mix.

I first noticed that I was “stepping on toes” when I had an encounter with the head of the local medical board.

It was in the summer of 1996 and it was late into the evening hours when I received a phone call from a particular Doctor’s wife. She’d called to report that she’d just driven by the hospital and noticed that his office lights were on. She filled me in on how (he) had problems with housekeeping forgetting to lock up with they were done. She was concerned that someone could get into the office and steal the pain killers he kept on hand. Since he was “away for a conference” until Monday she requested that we check on the building his office was in and that we let her know if there was anything out of the ordinary.

It was a simple request and from my office, I could see building 2 and that the lights were on. So, I told her I’d call her back if there was anything to worry about, took her name and number for the report I’d have to submit, and went to check on the building.

I, honestly, loved checking buildings. There’s nothing at all that is unnerving about checking an unsecured building with dark corridors, late at night, and without a weapon to defend yourself. Especially in the summertime, in a town filled with crime and slime. But, I had a job to do so I went and did what I was paid for.

As a lone security guard on duty, I reported my location to the hospital operator. When I went across the street to what was called building 2, I started by checking the doors. Door 1 was closed. It would have been luckier for me to find door 2 closed and that housekeeping just left the lights on. No such luck!

As I circled around to the backside of the building, which was where the parking lot connected to the structure, there was a car parked right outside. Having the training, I could ascertain that it was unlikely to be a burglar's car. Not too many burglars are rolling around in high-end Cadillacs. As I tested door number 2, it was unlocked.

I radioed the PBX operator and let her know I was going to be doing a building search.

Going into the building, I made my way down a corridor, checking each door as I progressed into the center of the doctors' offices. Finally, making it to the one office I was concerned with, I tested the door and it was unlocked. I slowly opened the door, shining my flashlight into the dimly lit office area, and announced, “Hospital Security.”

This was when my night went from alright to tense. I heard the words “Oh shit!” from one of the exam rooms. An obviously female voice was startled that I was there. Then I heard a male voice. It was the doctor that owned the practice.

After grasping what I’d just walked in on, I tried to explain my presence to the good doctor. Well, as the chief of the medical board, he was more than a little upset. I imagine, he was upset, because that wasn’t his wife I’d just caught him with as he came around the corner screaming at me and telling me how he was going to have my job.

For the time being things turned out alright for yours truly. The doctor caught up with me in the main building and started attempting to chew me out and threaten me with having me fired. What else was I to say but…

“I get it. I’ll finish up my follow-up and return the call to the reporting party that the office wasn’t left open by housekeeping and all the narcotics were safe.”

Well, he did ask who the party was that reported the lights being on. When I explained to him how his wife had driven by, on her way home from the video store, and noticed that his light was on, she’d called hospital security and requested a check of the office on his behalf.

“But, you haven’t called her yet?”

It’s funny how that changed everything. After that, I seemed to get plenty of attention from the doctors.

Attention Left Me Leery

Doctors will leave a fellow leery after a while. The second time one paid me attention was even more overt than the attention I got from the head of the medical board.

I was sitting at my desk, located right inside the entrance to the Emergency Department when one of the surgeons came out and went to the doctors' lounge. To my surprise, he opened the door and invited me into the lounge.

I really wasn’t expecting what came next. Other than one interaction with this particular doctor, which was to tell him that it was getting ready to storm and he’d left his convertible top down on his Vette, I had hardly spoken ten words to the man. Considering how he responded to what I thought was just doing him a favor, I really considered him to be a cocky prick. But, I went to see what I could do for him.

“I hear you are looking for a procedure,” he told me. “Don’t worry, I’ll hook you up free of charge. Hell, I won’t even bother with the anesthetic. Just a snip here and snip there and that vasectomy is all done.”

If you’re reading this and you’re a guy, you realize why this conversation made me extremely uncomfortable, to begin with. Now, factor in the reality that I wasn’t looking and hadn’t mentioned the idea of a vasectomy to anyone at the ripe age of 24, and you’ll understand why I took this as not only a threat, or some sort of bizarre message, but as one of the strangest interactions of my young professional career. A vasectomy without anesthesia, what doctor would offer such a thing.

The head of the medical board's partner? That would be him.

Motive’s For Paying Me Any Attention

Security guards, especially ones that pay attention, end up on the inside and learn all the dirty little secrets. Doctors are certainly going to be smart enough to figure that out. The more I stumbled onto things, the more I was leery of the attention they seemed to pay me.

A month after being offered a free vasectomy, sans painkillers, I was working one night and things were extremely quiet. The nursing staff was catching a much-needed break from their usual hustle and bustle, security was taking the night to relax after several weeks of fighting with kids coming in on some very bad dope, and then too good to be true become the sentiment for the rest of the day.

After coming back from doing 3 a.m. rounds, I relieved the door officer so he could go grab some lunch, and as I was sitting there I noticed lights bouncing around outside. Having done searches at night with flashlights, I knew I was seeing the lights from flashlights outside of the building. Considering that staff parking for the graveyard shift was where the lights were coming from, I went to investigate.

What I found was peculiar at the time. Two of the night shift cops were looking closely at a mini-van parked on the staff lot. So much for catching lunch with the girlfriend on the other side of the building.

The officers explained that they’d chased the van they were looking at and wondered if I knew who it belonged to. Doing some thinking, it hadn’t been there all night, and this told me that it was most likely a doctor. I called the operator's office to see if any of the doctors had recently checked in. Finding out who’s it was, I let the officers know. They asked if there was any reason the doctor would be in a big hurry, doing thirty more than posted speed limits.

It was a good question. Before I could answer, one of the E.R. nurses came out and advised that the doctor that owned the van had come in for two emergency cesarian sections.

I found it kind of strange that there were two C-sections all of a sudden. I had just been through the building and the girls in Obstetrics were as relaxed as they could be. One thing I’d noticed walking those halls for eighteen months, OB nurses aren’t relaxed when there’s a tricky or troubled delivery they’re working on.

I went back to my desk and sat there wondering what the truth was. If there were going to be two emergency C-sections, the surgery suites would have to be opened and surgery staff would need to be let into the surgical suites. I expected that would be occurring fairly soon.

Three hours passed and the hospital operator announced that someone needed to go up and open up surgery for incoming staff. Even more peculiar. The on-call surgery nurse lived a short distance (her house was visible from my office) from the hospital. It had taken three hours for a surgical nurse to come in to assist.

On his way out the door, the OB-GYN stopped me and asked me about the cops being there. He expended a lot of energy explaining to a 6.00 an hour security guard why he’d been speeding and what a horrible night he’d had. There literally was no justification for him to be explaining anything to me.

The General Hospital Of It All

In the spring of 1997, I was living with the woman that I honestly thought would be my second chance at love. I developed kidney-stone disorder during my early 20s and started making regular trips to the Emergency Room because of the pain. The kidney stones lasted about as long as the relationship did, as it turns out.

I left the hospital for what appeared and was for a while, greener pastures. Then, in 2002, my kidney-stones took me back to the Emergency Room as a young cop.

Emergency rooms will take good care of a person, and better care of a person that they know well. I felt very little pain and didn’t remember much of being taken into surgery. When I came out of surgery and was put in a room, the doctor that performed the surgery came in and explained things to me.

I’d had a stent placed into my ureter to keep things from getting blocked up. I would have to have a procedure to blast the stone into small enough pieces. The only problem, was that I was 6'4" and the stints are made to fit different heights. The one that they chose to put into me was for someone no taller than 5'6". The doctor assured me not to worry and just to take it easy.

Two weeks later I was back at the hospital for the procedure. The staff took me to a waiting room, told me to sit there until I was called on. Six hours went by and I was five hours past the 8:00 time for surgery. Getting up to use the bathroom, I was rather “freaked” out by the dark-colored blood that came out during my urination. It had been that way for a while but was getting progressively bloodier and I could feel that something was seriously wrong with me.

By 2:00 P.M. I was starting to get tired of things and began looking for answers. I found that I was put in the wrong waiting room by the staff, that they showed I hadn’t come for surgery, and that surgery wouldn’t be able to happen that day. I left, angry, sick, and bleeding internally.

Going to a hospital in a different town about an hour later, I was examined by the emergency room staff there and found that my blood count was severely depleted. After telling them the story, I was referred to a specialist in the field of urology. The emergency room doctor had pulled strings to get me into seeing the specialist late that afternoon.

“Don’t ever let him touch you again. I teach to guys at his level and he rarely attends continuing education seminars. We don’t even use these anymore and the one he’s put in your is tearing into your bladder because it’s not even close to the right size for your height.” I’ll never forget those words. Why, why would a doctor do such a thing?

Remember the woman I thought was going to be my second chance at love in this lifetime. We parted ways shortly after this happened. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the surgeon that installed the stent into my ureter and my fiancee were sleeping together.

In Retrospect

There are a million reasons that one might not want to date in the workplace. I’ll forever call my learning experience the “General Hospital Effect” because it happened in a hospital setting. What I learned was that there are just those playgrounds that aren’t meant to be stepped onto and this was a playground that stepping onto placed me at far more risk than it was ever worth.

Coincidence? One or two things might be considered a coincidence. Once you get to three you’re in a pattern. Perhaps it was all just happenstance and I was stuck in the middle of things I would never understand as a security guard. Perhaps I had simply been the victim of some unfortunate circumstances involving people that were wealthier and far more connected than I was ever going to be. Perhaps, just maybe, I’d peed in the wrong people's Cheerios and the final act was their way of trying to eliminate me from the equation.

I was out, I was young, and I chalked it all up to a learning experience and avoided that world like a plague, much like Covid.

This was a fun little piece of my history to share. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, let me know by clicking the heart below.

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