Hospital Games

The ER was small. The entire hospital was small, just 120 beds. It had opened six years earlier and Campbell was an initial staff member. In the Navy he would be called a plank owner. When the hospital had opened he, and two other doctors, had set up the emergency room medical staff. Campbell, and a number of other staff doctors, initially rotated through the shifts manning the ER twenty four hours a day. Now there was one full time doctor working the midnight shift and they were advertising for more full time staff. The one full timer wasn’t very good but was the only one who had applied for the job. For the new doctors in practice it added some income. Some were family doctors and internists and two surgeons. Emergency room physicians hadn’t been invented yet. The ER was almost empty with only one cubicle occupied. He saw Dotty Roots, the charge nurse, quickly beckon to him from behind the work station. “Morning Dot, what’s up?” She replied with her finger signaling him to lean over. “Did you hear?” “What?” He wasn’t privy to the news. “They shipped a kid out last night with asthma to Oceanside and she died on the way.” Ron thought that he saw her start to cry. “How old?” “Twelve. Her name was Millhouse.” “Millhouse! I have patients by that name. Oh god, I hope it’s not the same family.” It might not be but in a small town where Fairtown hospital was located it probably was. It was an unusual name. “What happened?”