Work called today.  Somebody was out, they wanted me to come in.  But I was so bad yesterday that I was feeling that familiar fondness for the rope (and I don't mean the one with the life ring at the end).  I retrieved myself from that abyss, but only with the promise that I would be 'sick' on Tuesday.  One day off isn't enough this week, not to mention that I was given four hours worth of work to do at home today.  So today I didn't call them back.  It is bad enough to be still suffering from my time there; to respond to their call for help only to say, "you're on your own" is cruel to both me and them. 

I didn't eat all day.  Just ate ten minutes ago.  And there's a muscle in the back of my neck burning like an oil field on fire.  I haven't begun to recuperate from the last week of hell-on-earth at that hospital where I work.  Staying home tomorrow is not about recuperating, it's about avoiding harm.  But I don't know if staying home just one day is going to help anything at all. 

I work in the admitting department at a detox.  However, we can't admit anybody without first beeping at least two people who are seldom readily available--and even less so on a holiday weekend like this last one.  But we cannot even begin the ordeal of beeping doctors and administrators for approval until after we endure the ordeal of lying to suffering people, telling them there are no beds when in fact there are empty beds.  It's just that their non-Medicare insurance is acceptable only if we have admitted one, and preferably two Medicare patients before them.  Guess which pays more. 

I might have some tolerance for this situation, if the hospital were not spewing cash to seven vice presidents and more, most who have the same last name as the hospital's president.  Nepotism aside (some waste is endemic), they just spent ninety thousand to replace a working phone system with one that doesn't.  More cash down the drain, and I can't admit you because your insurance pays fifty a day less than Medicare. 

There was general astonishment surrounding the new phone system's inadequacies when it was initially installed, and this fed some feeble hope it would be made right by the powers that be.  Over several month's that hope has been extinguished, and I can see now that everyone is grimly bearing as a matter of course the vast inefficiencies and impediments introduced by this expensive downgrade of our phone system.  'The way they do things will never change;' that's what everybody says. 

Let me go into just a few of the many lies and misrepresentations which arise from the fact that we also answer 1-800-ALCOHOL, the national drug and alcohol information and referral line.  If, for example, you are calling 800-ALCOHOL from Florida (or anyplace else outside of New England, for that matter), good luck.  You will be swiftly referred to another phone number which probably doesn't work, and if it does, it probably won't provide you with the information you are seeking.  This is more of a crime because our 'hotline' is advertised as something which it is not.  Until I complained a couple years ago, that page called us 'trained counselors.'  Now it calls us 'highly trained staff', and elswhere lies that 'you can talk through a difficult situation with one of our on-line counselors.'  The training I recieved six years ago (and repetitively since then) regarding calls to 800-ALCOHOL was very clear; it is not a counseling line, and we who answer it are not counselors, but admissions coordinators.  We arrange to admit you, or we give you a number and end the call. 

Somewhere between the institutional neglect, and the naked agony of the individual, there is me and a few comrades making 9, maybe ten bucks an hour.  We really do our best to help. 

I acknowledge the fiscal realities of providing an expensive service, and detoxification at AdCare Hospital is expensive; we require a three-thousand dollar cash deposit at the time of admission for patients who can't--or choose not to--use insurance.  And I think it is almost worth it.  It is a good place and it does a great deal of very good work.  But it wastes a lot of money, and it doesn't seem to be as bothered as me by the corners it has to cut to make ends meet.  There is somebody who needs help standing on every corner that they cut, somebody who is going to call me sooner or later, and I will have to say, 'not here.' 

Maybe I really am too sick to work today.

Into the 60's Howard Johnson's still owned the road. Expansion had stretched coast to coast. In 1965, sales exceeded those of McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken combined. They were the second largest food feeder in the United States exceeded only by the US Army. --from The Howard Johnson's Story

The last Howard Johnson's restuarant in Massachusetts, the state where HoJo's began, is closing today.

A Memorial Day musing from a while back: 'memorial', Joe: 05/31/00. 

I think I have forgotten the entire year, 2000.  I do not recall whether I wrote it (in handwriting) as '00,' or '2000.'  It seems unattached to the events which ocurred within its duration.  The year 2000 feels like a year whose arrival I am still anticipating.  Come to think of it, last year and this year both feel that way, too. 

A few months ago at work, where we write the date on hundreds of forms per day by hand, I wrote 10/19/86.  I don't remember the month and day when I wrote it, but that is what it looked like.  It came as clearly and naturally as if I had been writing it all day long.  I stared at it for an uncomfortable moment, pretending to wonder what it might mean.  I pretended not to be embarrassed, but I threw the page away.  And I pretended that I am not evading life, but living it.

Excuse me but, what year is it?  I know it is absurd of me to ask, but I seem to have been away.  I don't think I know this place, nor this body of mine, nor this life I apparently have lived. 

Happy Memorial Day.