Chapter 3: Politics

I work in a non-profit medical clinic. Non-profit. Non. We don't make money. We are not trying to cheat you out of money when we charge you for your visit, we are just trying to pay our employees. We did not double-charge your insurance because we're trying to scam them on your behalf. Really. We didn't.

The problem with this is that if we're not doing any of that we're instead getting our money from The Man. From the gov'ment. In short, we apply to a lot of grants. I say we, but I really mean everyone else, while I stand around like a deer caught in the headlights. Because this? This is exactly what I'm bad at.

I'm bad at it for several reasons.
1. This kind of essay, and they are all just gigantic essays, is not my forte. I don't like just writing words with nothing behind them. But this is so important! you say. Yeah, I don't really care? And you know why I don't care?
2. It's stupid! So many of the grants are stupid. The amount that people are awarded is stupid, the criteria is stupid, and there's no reason for it to be this stupid. And I'm not good at stupid.

We're sort of doing a grant now for substance abuse treatment in children (ages 9-21) and if we get the grant then we get $60,000. Now, I still consider sums in terms of tuition so that's a pretty good deal to my eyes. Not so! The $60,000, which will ultimately be awarded to 12 agencies, can get one, maybe one and a half counselors. More likely it'd be one counselor and a half of a medical student (the smart half, we hope). And that's not counting renting out office space, the cost of advertising our service, the cost of materials, and other misc costs. $60,000 is apparently worth not a lot and the worst thing it's not worth is the result.

With $60,000 the government is not buying results. It's buying 12 half-assed attempts at showmanship. But there's such an obvious solution! Award, say, $120,000 to 6 agencies. Or even $240,000 to 3 agencies. Do that and get results. Don't just put on a puppet show and call it life-changing.

But The Man can't do that. Because Darwin doesn't apply to nonprofit agencies. Apparently the ones who do badly are worth just as much as the ones who could actually produce a positive effect. I understand the reasoning behind this, because it means that you're giving everyone a chance, especially the start-up agencies. But it shouldn't work that way. Politics. Don't even get me started on politics.

Chapter 2: Not my place to say.

It occurs to me that one can either run a clinic or one can work in one. You can't do both. If you do both you will fail as my boss is failing.

He sees maybe four patients a day. Six at most and that's stretching it so far I can't even see the edges. He takes time out from seeing patients to call random people on the phone. Hell, sometimes I walk into his office and the patient is just sitting there, looking confused, as Dr. Galbis is on the phone with some government agency he's trying to get money from. This isn't right. And it's driving me crazy.

Dr. Guzman works here at the clinic. He sees around ten patients a day, sees them on time, and does all his own filing which is great for me and Jenny. I appreciate that he's younger than Dr. Galbis and that Dr. Galbis works only half the day, but I get the feeling that if Dr. Galbis gave himself over just to seeing patients he could be a lot more effective than he is. Or if he just gave himself over to running the clinic smoothly everything would be a lot better. But he doesn't.

You can see people start to understand this as they come through. In my short time I've seen a bunch of Saturday and weekday volunteers come and go (we go through them like, I don't know, dish towels or something) and they all start out punctual and hopeful and expecting everything to be run well. But it's not. And this is why La Clinica is mentioned four times in the Wash Post and we aren't. Because they're running a much tighter ship than we are. And I'll bet you the head of La Clinica doesn't take patients.

It's not my place to bring this up. I've ben here only since June and I probably don't actually know what I'm saying, but it's like someone's trying to run a race, keep track of all the people in the race, and fix the race track at the same time. You can't do all three. You're going to get run over.

Chapter 1 and a bit: Footnotes

I told myself I was going to update on Saturdays. That when I had something good to write that I would keep it until the following Saturday, or that if I had nothing I would force myself to write at least a few lines on empty minds and emptier waiting rooms. But on a Saturday.

So, what am I doing writing on a Tuesday? Unlike the famous line of it being five o'clock somewhere, and that shadow on your face being right on time, nowhere is it Saturday right now. But never fear, I am not really here. These are just footnotes and explanations that it occurs to me I should have written before.

First: the fact that I am referring to this as a novella. Why? I don't really know. It's hardly an auto biography, given my penchant for long-winded tales and not-quite truths. But it's not quite fiction, either. I'm just presenting what's happening in the light of my mind. And I like the word novella. Novel sounds so drab, a Sisyphus rock to be conquered both in writing and in reading, and novelette sounds as though it wears frilly pinafores. Novella is charmingly adolescent, light on the dance floor, and caught perfectly between the baby books and the ancient tomes. So her name is Novella.

Second: What the hell am I doing? Who cares if I write this or not? Well, first of all, my mother, you lackluster, lackadaisical, lumbering whatever you are. Mum wants to know what I’m doing. And, theoretically, so do my scores of aunts and cousins and other obligated family members. So this is for them.

But it’s also for me. I get the feeling that I’m on the edge of something grand and that if I don’t do this I’ll look back and wonder why, and what that fantastic thing said was, and how I felt when I saw my first patient independently of my boss. That and I really need to get my ass in gear and keep writing.

Not that many footnotes this time, dear readers, so I will end it there.

Chapter One: The Abbaration

Chapter One: The Aberration

I like books. That goes without saying for a lot of people who know me, but it is still something that should be said. I like chapters in books. I like accomplishing small things, and getting to the end of a chapter is one of those small things. Though I read so quickly and so ferociously that really chapters just give me a point to stop and blink before continuing on.

This is not my first chapter. Nor is it my second, third, or even fourth. But it's also not my second book quite yet. This is an aberration. A novella, to be slipped neatly between the Scotland chapters and the Rest Of My Life.

I recently left Scotland. Left a gorgeous flat, brilliant friends, and what could very well be a bright future in Psychology, to return home and try my hand at medicine. I'm an optimist at heart and it shows, especially in a move such as that. Without a plan or idea really of what I was going to do I came home. Maybe I was going to train to be a paramedic. Maybe I was going to work for the American Red Cross, using once more the skills I learned working for their British counter-part. Or maybe I was just going to lie around and bemoan the fact that I didn't know what to do with myself. Thankfully I have friends who are more realistic than I.

I work now at a free medical clinic in Washington, DC. I'm technically the Medical Assistant, but I do a lot of things that aren't checking people's blood pressures and doing filing.

In my first one of these town-crier type blogs it was all about me. The second was about words and university and me. The third was about me and my writing. And the fourth is this. Yes, maybe I have an addiction, but working in a clinic could give me worse addictions. Coffee, for one.

So here chapter one of my novella, The Aberration. I don't know when the climax will be, or what literary themes will emerge, or even who the cast of characters will be. All I know is that I've already started out wrong. You should never write in the first person.