"Welcome back to St Luke's," the Chief Administrator greeted me. "I can't tell you what a relief it is to have you back on board. The hospital almost ground to a halt without you and the other nurses. You don't realise how valuable somebody is until they are no longer there."

"You do realise I'm only back here on a few conditions, don't you?" I asked in an icily polite tone.

"Ah yes," he replied, looking at his clipboard list. "You are guaranteed fixed shift bonuses, shifts no longer than eight hours in length, and no duties in the burns unit or the terminal diseases wards."

"And the first time I fall on the floor with horrendous pain, my salary for that day is doubled," I reminded him. "And if it happens twice in one day, then it's tripled, and my shift is finished. So I get to go home, still on triple pay. I think I can cope with that."

He glared at me. "And our condition is that you never mention this arrangement to a soul. We can't afford to go paying everybody triple shift pay, but you, as head nurse, are unfortunately vital to the smooth running of this hospital. Any such claims by you will of course be immediately verified by another member of the staff."

"If you are suggesting that I will make false claims, then I in turn suggest that you are the member of staff who will verify them." I knew I was on safe ground here, as his pain tolerance was known to be extraordinarily low, and he was among the first medics to resign from the hospital when PARSE was introduced.

It was back in 2019 that the big jump in medical diagnosis occurred, a system called PARSE, which proved to be of huge benefit to patients, of course, but so disliked by medical practitioners that many of them resigned in protest against the procedure. The entire health system was in danger of collapsing, so huge financial incentives had to be provided in order to entice the doctors back.

This innovation was the Pain Assessment Receptive Stimulation Effect, officially known as PARSE, but cordially known to doctors as the Pain In The Arse.
The way it worked was that the patient and the doctor or nurse each touched a sensor pad installed in every surgery, hospital ward, ambulance, etc., which connected the two by direct nerve induction, so that the medico, for a few seconds, experienced the location and severity of the pain or discomfort suffered by the patient. As you will recall, this increased the efficiency of diagnosis by at least 95% across the board, permitting correct treatment to commence immediately, thus saving the patient much future suffering, even death.

It also demonstrated which members of the medical profession truly had a vocation, and which ones were in it purely for the prestige and the financial rewards. No amount of prestige could compensate for the transferred, if transitory, agony of a burns patient, or somebody in the last stages of a terminal illness, though, as was soon discovered, money talks. Loudly!

I know, because I had been helping in the burns unit at St Luke's when PARSE was introduced, and though I considered myself to be above average in the dedication factor, I found myself unable to continue working in almost constant pain. Eventually of course, PARSE was modified to the stage where it could be de-intensified, transmitting merely a moderate ache, enabling a nurse to continue changing dressings, etc., but this was still 20 years into the future.

"But you can't resign," argued my lazy good-for-nothing husband when I arrived home from the hospital 3 hours before the normal end of my shift. I'd quit on the spot when a smug surgeon insisted that I continue to work with both the patient and me connected to PARSE.

"Well, now you'll have to get off your duff and go out and support us for a change. That bastard Wilkinson could see I was in so much agony I could barely stand up, but no, I had to do as Himself Almighty ordered. When he refused to disconnect the patient from PARSE I told him to fold his orders up small, with many corners, and insert them where the sun don't shine. And now I'm telling you, off that couch and down to the Jobs Centre, or you'll find I can go on strike in the kitchen, and in the bedroom as well!"

And now my strike was over, my husband quit his new job immediately, and quickly found himself ejected from our home. This worm had turned, and was relishing her newfound power. The necessary funding for increased benefits for affected medical staff was recouped from the money saved by eliminating faulty diagnoses, thus cutting out expensive and mostly unnecessary treatment costs. Life on the wards resumed without further ado, though there were the occasional hiccups.

One night, doing my rounds before going off duty, I found a young probationer nurse sitting beside the bed of an elderly man dying from a stomach cancer. About to commend her on her devotion to her patients, I noticed that her eyes were closed.

"Nurse." No response. I tapped her arm and said in a louder voice, "Nurse Saxon!" Her eyes opened slowly and a dazed look made itself at home in them.

"Nurse Brennan," she said in an apprehensive manner. "I thought you'd gone for the night."

"Evidently," I remarked coldly. "What's going on here?" Then I noticed her hand lying over the bedside PARSE contact, and my brain connected the dots. She had taken advantage of the old man's medication, and was sound asleep on morphine.

Saxon blushed and started gabbling out an excuse for her behaviour. "I couldn't help it. It's not my fault. I've been on double shifts for 2 days now, and I was desperate for some sleep. I didn't mean to do it, and I haven't harmed anyone. It's not such a crime, is it? Please, Nurse Brennan, don't report me. It won't happen again. It was just a one off, I swear. I was just so tired I wasn't thinking straight. I promise you, I'll never do it again."

Cutting off her protests, I told her to go home and get some proper sleep. "You'll have plenty of time, because I'm suspending you for a week on basic pay. Having to go without your bonuses and shift allowances, might teach you not to abuse your position of trust. Now get out of my sight and send in Nurse Piper."

The following day in the staff dining room, I told my friend Ruth, one of the radiologists, what had happened. She laughed, and said, "So you finally caught on, did you? I warned them, but they thought they had your timetable down pat."

"You mean it's not just a one off?"

"It's been going on for a long time now. When we were so short staffed, they started getting desperate because they were pulling double shifts on a regular basis. All due to the resignations over PARSE, they figured out that it was one way to get some sleep, and consider it one of the perks of that pain in the arse. They even have a system of lookouts. I warned them that you'd find out, but whoever listens to a radiologist?"

"So if you knew, why didn't you let me know?" I was hurt at her betrayal.

She sighed, and looked at me as if I'd just dribbled down my uniform. "Donna," she said, "I have other friends beside you. I didn't want to get them into trouble, and besides, I honestly believe this hospital would have ground to a halt without this harmless" and she emphasised the word harmless, "safety valve."

"But it's unethical. It goes against all the rules of patient care."

"Now hold on," she warned. "It's not actually against any rules, because nobody thought of this thing happening. The staff knows their responsibilities, they cover for each other, and the patients never know what's going on because they're asleep. If they were to wake up, the nurse would wake up too, so in a way, they are still providing quality care for their patient."

I was too incensed to argue her weird logic, but responded with, "You're taking this Devils advocacy business a long way, aren't you?"

"Who's a Devil's advocate?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. "You think we're not short handed and overworked down in Radiology?" She stood up and walked away from the table. As she neared the door, she turned and said, "Like I always say, if you can't beat them, join them!"

© Sandy Parkinson, October 2007. Word count: 1461