She paid the deli owner her usual price – the cost of the sandwich plus a tip equal to the cost of the sandwich, which had been her idea – and headed towards the hospital. She was working the Galdori wing tonight, which meant either of two things. It'd either be filled with spoiled Anaxi Galdori needing help for simple things like a headache or a minor stomach bug, convinced they're going to die and making ridiculous demands on her time or it'd be dead as a doornail.
To say that Anna didn't like Anaxi Galdori would be the polite way to put it. She hated the way they lorded over everyone else and especially how they treated their passives. Anna wasn't quiet about her opinion of passives and was kind to them to the point that it offended some Anaxi Galdori. She always fell back on saying that you get better servants if you use the carrot rather than the stick but, really, she couldn't find it in her to be cruel to the poor things. At least back home everyone understood that you had to rely on each other to survive, whether they could touch and use the mona or not. Of course, the Galdori had to keep everyone in line, but there was no point in beating down people too badly.
She stopped at the entrance to the human wing, wiping the crumbs off on her white coat before entering. The coat was another eccentricity she had adopted. Most everyone else just decided to stick to just uniforms, but Anna wore the coat over her uniform to catch the worst of the stains that came with working in a hospital. She hated adding to the cost of the hospital and, if she had to pay out of her own pocket to replace the white coat to keep the hospital from having to replace her uniforms more frequently, she didn't mind doing it. Between her two jobs, she had plenty of money to spare.
"Hey, Larindus," Anna said to the Galdori that was manning the security desk. "Hulali's blessings on you."
"Evening, Dr. Aubellard. Alioe bless you," the pale man said as he checked the schedule. "Galdori wing tonight? Lucky you. Dr. Enricarde sent a passive over, claiming he had – and I quote – 'a touch of the trots'."
Anna scoffed. "Only because he's so drunk he has to keep trotting to the toilet to puke it up. Hulali's tits. Here's praying that it's a quiet night. I'd hate to have to send a passive over to grab one of the on-call doctors. Nobody likes being awakened in the middle of the night," she sighed as she waved and walked down the connecting wing between the Stacks side of the hospital and the University side of the hospital.
Anna didn't know why the scheduling department ever bothered scheduling Enricarde for night shifts. It was a 50/50 chance that he'd show up on any night he was scheduled and, if he didn't show up, the other doctor on duty would be stuck working the wing alone. Sure, they could theoretically call someone from another wing, but if there were a string of emergencies, there often wasn't time to call doctors from other wings.
Anna touched her tattooed shoulderblade with her right hand, asking Hulali to ease the waters for her tonight as she entered the Galdori wing. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw one of the passives assigned to the wing mopping the floor. If the passives were doing basic housekeeping, things were quiet.
"Evening, Dina," she said pleasantly to the passive before heading over to the ward desk and checking to see which residents were assigned to the wing. The residents weren't lucky enough to find out what shifts they were working a week ahead of time. They usually found out the day before they were supposed to work, since scheduling had to assign residents to where they were needed, depending on how many inpatients they had. She saw there was only two residents assigned to her wing tonight. "Only one inpatient, then?" she asked the passive. "I take it Livingstone and Hallewell are staffing the emergency room?"
"Yes, Doctor," the passive replied. "Should I go get them?"
"Yes, please," Anna said as she reviewed the record of who was staying overnight in the hospital. It turned out that Mrs. Pandeima's rheumatism is acting up again and she couldn't walk, so she came in like Dr. Addington told her to if it got that bad again.
The passive came back, the two residents behind her. She did her evening check-in with them, sending Livingstone back to the ER with orders to send Dina or one of the other passives if someone came in. She took Hallewell to check in on Mrs. Pandeima, who was peacefully sleeping, then asked the resident to review the woman's record. Anna herself was already caught up. She was quick at reading records, unless they were inches thick, plus Mrs. Pandeima was someone who often came in for her rheumatism. Addington was working on some rheumatism research and Mrs. Pandeima was one of his patients. Unfortunately, the treatments that were working with other patients weren't working as well with Mrs. Pandeima. Addington suspected it was because her case was so advanced, since Mrs. Pandeima was elderly, even for a Galdori.
Knowing that Mrs. Pandeima was sleeping peacefully, Anna made her way to the ER, intending to check the stock of supplies to pass the time. Hallewell could review paperwork on her own and, if she needed her, she would send one of the passives or get Anna herself.