Orderly?

 Orderly?

We had an orderly at Frick Hospital that one time impressed and was befriended by a wealthy man. The man set up a rather substantial endowment for the hospital and would be continued as long as the orderly worked at the hospital. He was old when I started to work at the hospital. Slowly he developed some bad habits that management finally had to step in to correct.

I’m sure that one habit started innocently enough eating the unclaimed trays of patients who had been sent home before the kitchen could collect them. That progressed to eating untouched food from partially eaten trays. He’d collect untouched items and eat them in the soiled utility room.

Eventually, someone spoke with management and he was to eat his midday meal in the cafeteria for free, if he stopped eating food from patient trays.

Over the years his white uniforms became at best dirty, greasy gray. He’d wear them for several days before he would wash them. Other staff members made jokes about his clothes. “It’s easy for him to put on his uniform in the morning, yellow in the front and brown in the back.” Or “he just leans his clothes in the corner at night, until morning.” Sometimes he would drink too much, return to the hospital, and fall asleep on the hard wooden benches in the men’s locker room. He’d wake with a headache, but he wouldn’t have to change clothes. He was still wearing his “whites.”

Administration finally told him to stop and instead wear fresh operating room greens each day. They “promoted” him to locating missing wheelchairs and carts and returning them to their proper floors.

Each day before starting his rounds, he would laboriously copy the day’s menu on the back of an envelope and share it with staff on all the floors. They had chili on the Thursday, the day they passed out pay checks. He’d call out as he rounded, “Chili and checks.” On lunches of chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy, he’d share, “Chicken hips and smashed potatoes.” 

He called his beer “Polish pop” and his chewing tobacco “West Virginia coleslaw,” and he didn’t like women. He’d walk nearly five miles one way each day, rain or shine, only missing one week of work when he was hospitalized with pneumonia. People would offer him rides. Occasionally he would accept, but he would look into the car first and if it was a woman, he’d shake his head “No” and walk on.

One day a nursing’s secretary was driving home in a tremendous downpour. She saw Him walking with his jacket zipped up, hunched over, trying to protect his face from the pounding rain. She stopped. He looked inside and shook his head. She leaned over rolled down the window a crack and said, “If you don’t get in this car right now, I’m gonna kick your ass.” Between the secretary’s threat and the rainstorm, he climbed inside her car and allowed her to drive him home.