A Grand Old Opera

I've started to see the time I spend working in a hospital as if I'm inhabiting a grand Opera.  Not a soap opera as we're not allowed to use soap, only skin-peeling hand sanitiser which blisters my skin with overuse, but a huge and riotous comedy piece of theatrical nonsense with a list of characters complex enough to make Messrs Verdi and Strauss envious to the core.  We even have music in some quarters but it's only in the background and mainly provided by Saga FM.  Here are some of the current bodies on stage:

Prince Theodore:  a consultant surgeon who is seen by many as The Massive Ego in the ENT department.  I've been there for four years and have never seen this chap in the flesh, with or without his theatre gown.  I suspect he is a tenor, and could command a sizeable audience while able to puff out his chest and declare his power in a grand duet with the heroine of the piece.  And yet, a storm in the sea of life has sent his secretary away on a sabbatical for three months.  Needing a replacement pretty damn quick for the missing assistant, he has nabbed the one person in the hospital least suitable for the role.

Princess Valkyrie:  The ultimate Fat Lady.  Ubiquitous in nature with a foot in every department, she admits she's a great secretary although one who has never learned to type.  After two weeks of correcting her work and explaining the wrongness of slipping into block capitals in the middle of a letter, I gave up.  Without consultation of any kind, she has been given a desk in our office and granted three months' work to get Prince Theo's stuff in order.  This means one of us has to give up our desk i.e. me.  Apparently, there was a meeting while I was on leave which I would have attended, but they chose to move the time so I couldn't go.  So, I have been banished to the frozen wastes of an old desk in Sterile Services.

The Management:  You are familiar with these characters already in the form of the Andrex Puppy and the Fruit Bat, and with Matronella appearing triumphant in the background accompanied by a chorus of nurses, they make up The Three Little Maids.  By email, the Andrex Puppy asked me last week if I would consider applying for the full time post as advertised around all the bulletin boards and agencies in the area.  I was undecided for a day until a moment of clarity arrived in the nick of time.  We had a visit from The Management later that day, backed up by the Fat Engineer, who asked questions about our office and how many of us serviced the twenty four consultants.  There's no need for a magician or a psychic in this opera as it rapidly transpired they wanted our room returned to a bedroom, along with the rest of the first floor, before the sun set.

Raven with Attitude:  Me, I guess.  And I can't join in with the soprano songs because I'm at least a mezzo soprano if not lower.  At school, every hymn we sang in assembly was a struggle in the wrong key and 'Hark the Herald Angels' is a non-starter at Christmas.  Only last Saturday, I was croaking along to the Last Night of the Proms and when the vast collective voices in the Albert Hall hit the high note in Jerusalem, I reached for the throat spray.  No high arias for me, thank you.

At the end of the first act, I am at the corner of the stage, singing for my supper.  A tear-jerking number, I declare myself sans d'argent et pauvre and decline to apply for the job I've done easily for the past few years.  Clutching at my heart, I know that Princess Valkyrie has been given the nod and the promise of a whopping payrise, and even if I did the best interview in the history of job hunting, she would still be given the starring role.  I am cast out into the cold after being reassured I still have a valuable role to play.

The Fool:  If not me, this has to be the Director of Operations.  Not surgical in nature, he's more financial and is in charge of playing chess with the personalities.  Manipulative in nature, he sings in the baritone range with great expression as he stalks around the place, hiding in plain sight alluding to the bloody dagger secreted up his sleeve.  He is a man of dark deeds.

The IT Guy:  He only appears briefly when Princess Valkyrie asks for her equipment to be mended.  He hums, head down and fluffs his lines and then disappears, leaving her in distress.  From the wings, he sings a haunting melody as there is another job to partly finish.  When the stage lights dim to darkness, I like to think he's a male stripper in his spare time and wears a monkey thong.

Skulking at the back with some members of The Chorus of Disapproval, I attended a briefing just to let us know how we are doing and what's coming up next.  Act II mainly follows Act I, but what do I know  When The Fool and Matronella had completed a mercifully short duet, there was a lull in the performance requiring audience participation.  'Any questions' they trilled.  The elderly matriarch standing next to me had to get another verse off her chest.
"The government is enforcing payment of the national living wage from April next year.  Will we be getting it?"  The Fool answered truthfully.
"In the great scheme of things, it's an insignificant amount of money and yes, definitely, you will."
Thus the chorus responded at full volume.  "If it's so insignificant ... can we have it now?"
'No." Replied The Fool.

It seems The Management are about to completely rewrite the third act with a smaller chorus and some duff songs and in the medical secretaries department, I'm gearing up for the Fat Lady to start singing.

Tip of the Beak:  Act III opens at dawn on a Saturday morning.  I have to escort patients up to their bedrooms at 6.30am but the time on the script says 6.45am.  In computers, this is called an 'interface'.  We are very bad at interfacing.  On the whole, The Chorus of Disapproval are lovely girls but lacking initiative in the main.  All ten sets of patients were early but none had been admitted and the stage area was getting bad tempered and crowded.  The Administrator was fluttering around checking the automatic doors worked.  Open, close, open close. Yes indeed.  Frustrated, I asked her a question.
"Why cannot you get your 4rse in gear and put these guests on the computer?"
"They are early."
"So what happened to efficiency?"
She trilled back at me.  "It is only six forty four."
"Count Alexei and his interpreter have to go upstairs NOW."
"They are still early.  They cannot go upstairs."  Ignoring the score, she inspected her new nail job for an entire 60 seconds.  I filled my lungs and let rip.
"Yes they can ... Yes they can ... Yes they CCCAAANNN!!!
Now where did I put that tin helmet with the cow horns?

Raven