The Oath

The ER was fairly crawling with doctors when they brought me in. In fact, now I come to tell the story, some of them actually were crawling. On the floor. Unblinking. Forky tongues.

"Bad automobile accident," said the nurse who was delivering my sorry carcass. "Eight hundred broken bones, ..."

"There are only 206," said the head doctor.

The nurse shrugged. "You count 'em. Fifteen hundred major arteries severed ..."

"There aren't that many," said the head doctor.

The nurse shrugged again. "And ... miscellaneous other life-threatening injuries."

"Ok, never mind," said the head doctor. "First, we stop the bleeding. And start transfusions."

"Oh, no, you don't!" chorused a knot of the more crawly sort of doctors. "Not without cutting the wasteful blood product spending."

"Um, we need blood to save the lives of people like this poor schmuck here," replied the head doctor.

"I beg your pardon!" I gurgled, but I doubt that I was coherent enough to be heard.

"No treatment without cuts in treatment!" insisted what I was quickly coming to think of as the Disloyal Opposition. "But we can use the defibrillator on 'im!"

"No defibrillators while he has a pulse," said the head doctor. "Oh, all right. We can cut down some on plasma."

"He's flat lining," said the nurse.

I was. I looking down at my body and starting to think, "Good riddance!"

"Ok," said the head doctor. "Let' get the defibrillator going."

"Oh, no, you don't!" objected the Disloyal Opposition, blocking the way to my body.

"But ... you even suggested it," the head doctor pointed out.

"That was before," said the Disloyal Opposition. "If we defibrillate him, and he recovers, that will make you look good."

"But the point is to save a life," said the head doctor.

"No, it isn't," clucked the Disloyal Opposition. "The point is to win. We want one of our guys to be head doc. We have to make you look bad so that you'll get fired."

"But this guy will die," said the head doctor.

"So?" said the Disloyal Opposition. "Small price to pay. For us, ... nothing, really."

I was watching from somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling and couldn't really offer an opinion.

"But you took the Hippocratic Oath!" protested the head doctor. "You know, 'I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures necessary' and all that?" He paused a moment. "Er, ... didn't you?"

"Oh, the Hypocritic Oath, that's what you're talking about," replied the Disloyal Opposition. "Sure. 'We are the Good Guys. It is right that we should be rich and powerful. And screw anyone who stands in the way!' That oath."

Good riddance is right.