The check did not come on Thursday. "The Manager", a tall, almost feminish man with an MBA (Yale, 2001), passed her work station several times on Friday; stopping, peering in to her workstation, making sure she was "on the job". Page knew the clock was ticking. Not a word from Company "X". The bastards didnt have the class to reassure her the hold up was a matter of internal bureaucracy, or some rookie coder with no familiarity with the ICD-9-CM 2005, (the fucking bible of medical billing....the Holy Grail, the "Word"). That had to be the reason for such an unpardonable delay. After all business runs on "ethics".
John Palmer rarely left her mind on Friday. Not that the "not yet again dead" man Palmer, Palmer himself, mattered. It was the unmet quota, the threat of terminaton, the dread of being branded as incompetent, of having her exhaulted "Associates Degree" in medical coding thrown into question. Where else upon God's earth could she speak such an arcane, powerful language? A language no one but fellow medical coder-gangsters spoke or knew. Knowing this "medspeak" implied a superiority she enjoyed. Without it, a job at Wal Mart was all she could aspire to. The same fear applied to the hundreds of thousands of "Bees" working for thousands of company "Xs", and within the Government, the ICD-9-CM was the only language accepted. No compromise, human contact, or even a bribe would cause those inflexible robots to budge from the ABSOLUTE, RIGID, application of the "Word".
By lunch, the "not yet again dead", John Palmer, dominated her brain like insulation around a water heater. Palmer quickly became her only reason to live. Frantically, she rechecked (for the hundreth time) the codes she meticulously placed under his personal data, over a week ago. Everything was correct. There was no mistake. She was dead sure.
So why the fuck was "The Manager" observing her like his next meal?
Because HE wasnt gonna take the hit on such an easy score for the hospital. A blizzard of questions would descend upon his head if the money didnt show, if the gaping, sucking, hospital money hole was not fed.
Who gave a shit about the poor "dead again undead" person languishing in a blank white folder in the dungeon of her computer? Not the hospital, or "The Manager", or company"X", or the Government, or any of the other coders working in her office; themselves torturing some unfortunate "unsoul" with economic terrorism.
As lunchtime pushed inexorably to quitting time, Page stopped searching the "accounts recieved" screen for a check she knew was not coming.
A nasty, institutional battle was heading her way. She could feel it. John Palmer did not matter. The sacred priciple of PAYING for John Palmer's "not yet again death" did.
As the clock struck 5:00 PM EST, she opened, a last time, the folder where the victim sat. Palmer looked straight into her huge angry eyes, and heard her say,
"Have a good weekend, you sucker!"
Shortly after that, the lights in the folder went out, and the dark eyes of John Palmer closed into a deep, temporary slumber.
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