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>> Cafeteria 3 <<

Outside County Hospital, a world was churning with ominous events, physical and economic. Baghdad had been transformed from a distant flight of amusing children's literary fancy to a festering nidus of danger. A dessert war in the East was threatening. To that threat, medical response catastrophe planning sessions had been held to update procedures should military mass casualties spill into the civilian populace by mayhem or should medical resources get diverted to war abroad or both. The blind manta of efficiency, 100% bed utilization, had become a formula for guaranteed failure should any of the above occur. Fewer people than ever were insured. HMOs were just flat out not paying bills. It was clear to anybody who knew anything, HMO meant Hem, Muddle and Obfuscate. Preparedness and national readiness are not their concerns - just not paying and having legal mechanisms to make not paying work. All the disaster planning session what-ifs were entered into a list, deliberated one by one with an eye to real resource allocation, and each entry was annotated with a conclusion drawn from exacting analysis, "We're fucked." Conversation around the table was peppered with the ominous conclusions of the readiness review. Seth Popper was asking if the actual submitted written record used those exact words when Denise Morgan informed him that she was secretary. He just groaned with his head hanging. She wasn't. Ignoring all this, doctor Macaluso subtly scrutinized his old friend across the table, that saddened soldier whose war was lost to the unforeseen. Doctor Frank Sumner, unrivaled diagnostician, gentleman, combat survivor, physically disfigured hero, was now spiritually dead of a wound he couldn't hope to heal. It was her, Julie. Bullets and burns didn't kill him, she did. She must have been something to leave such a good man