It was a Monday and I was off from school, so I was going to my dad’s office.
“Yay!” I said as we pulled into a parking space. He led me inside the building, up some stairs, around some corners, through some doors and into his office.
It smelled like eye drops and medicine in the office. Nurses in flowery and green pjs walked around with boxes of pills and sharp tools in their hands. I turned around. There, standing next to me, was a nurse in regular clothes.
“Are you Mary?” I asked.
She nodded “And you’re Genna.”
I nodded my head yes.
“Then come with me. I’m going to teach you how to pull charts,” said Mary. I followed her into a room behind the desks where there were a lot of shelves.
“I’ll give you a tour after lunch,” said Mary as she handed me the sheet of charts I had to pull. I had a lot – 23 to be exact. By 10:00 I was done with the list.
“Mary, I’m done,” I said. I handed her the sheet and the charts. She took them to her desk.
“Alright. I’ll give you a – wait! Isn’t that your dad?” She asked. I saw my dad peek from inside the room. I followed him into the room, not knowing what was going to happen.
There was a patient in the chair covered with leather in front of me. There was a little table with wipes and a desk with a lamp and a chart. It read “Maria Loring.”
“Here. Here is an eye drop bottle. Put some eye drops in the left eye,” said my dad. I took some eye drops and squeezed them in the left eye.
But on the first try I missed. Eye drops squirted on the floor and slowly made a puddle. And it was a big one, too.
My dad didn’t pay the puddle much attention. All he did was glare at it and tell me to try again.
This time it was better. The eye drops fell in the eye and not on the floor.
“Good job!” said my dad. He patted me on the back.
I was very startled. The eye drops fell out of my hand and flew in the air. They landed on the floor and started leaking, making yet another four-inch puddle.
My dad mumbled something and handed me a sharp tool.
“Give this to Mary in room three. She needs it,” he ordered. He left to go check on another patient. Once he was out of the room, I started to the door.
Halfway to the door, I slipped on a puddle. I fell down hard and the sharp tool went flying into the air.
Pain shot through my body. It gave me a headache and made me dizzy. But that wasn’t what was worrying me.
The sharp tool was flying through the air and was about to fall pointy-side first on the patient.
She could probably sense the pointy tool, too. She yelped and pushed herself out of the chair just as the tool pinned her dress to the chair like a spear.
“AAGGHH!” screamed the patient. She fainted and landed in the second puddle of eye drops next to her chair.
I unpinned her dress and took the tool to room three were a patient was having a nervous breakdown and announcing that he was going to die.
“Calm down,” said Mary, but I chose that moment to hand her the sharp tool.
Well, the patient in the chair started going cukoo. I decided it was getting out of hand and a little disturbing after a while. The patient had stopped screaming. He was holding onto the chair for dear life and making monkey noises.
My dad’s patient was still out cold when I got inside his room. I had to help drag her to the hospital part of the building so she could at least lie on a bed.
Then he went for a conference. He left Mary in charge of me, which I guess I enjoyed. She didn’t go to the cafeteria for lunch, though. She took me to some restaurant down the road. I guess it was nice.
But as I ate, I thought to myself, I should be a doctor when I grow up. I’m great at it!
THE END
