Chapter Seven
Rylee
Monday
Rylee tapped on the office door next to hers, then stuck her head in to see if Neesa, her co-director of operations here at WorldCares and, more importantly, her very dear friend, was up for an interruption.
Neesa spun her chair toward Rylee. “Hey, good you’re back.” She pushed her laptop to the side. “That took a while. I figure that’s a good sign?”
Rylee sauntered in and flopped into one of the guest armchairs. “I should track my period, take up yoga, and put an app on my phone so I can learn to breathe deeply.”
Neesa laced her hands and stretched them across her forehead, tipping her head back. “Shit. Again?”
“Yup.”
She brought herself upright and focused on Rylee’s bouquet. “Beautiful flowers. Did you buy them to cheer yourself up? I love the colors.”
“Amazing, aren’t they?” Rylee turned them for Neesa to see. “I thought you might have a spare vase in your credenza that I could borrow.”
“This is the only one.” Neesa stood to pick up a vase on the edge of her desk, then, holding it over the trash can, picked out the wilting flower bouquet and dropped it into the garbage.
“I got the flowers with the nice sentiment written on the card, then the guy ghosts me.” She walked over to Rylee and held the vase out with two hands.
“I don’t need to sit here staring at the flowers, wondering if he’s dead in a ditch or just dead to me. ”
“Morbid.” Rylee glanced at the water in the cut glass crystal vase. Since it looked like it was freshly changed, she plunked her own flowers in.
Neesa turned and put the vase on the edge of her desk, then made her way back to her chair.
“So this is what I can tell you about the flower story,” Rylee started.
“It’s a story?”
“Yup, a whole story, might as well get comfortable,” Rylee said, slipping her feet out of her shoes. “I was on the top floor of the stupid medical building, and since I was snorting mad like an angry bull, I figured I should take the stairs rather than be near people.”
“Wise.”
“The sound of me slamming my feet against the steps echoed so loudly, I bet the people in the halls thought there was some kind of emergency evacuation drill going on.”
“Understandable.” Neesa laced her hands in her lap as she leaned forward.
“It makes me question my mental health, Neesa. Maybe I am just anxious.”
“You’re the least anxious person I know. Go on. Flowers?”
“I’m pounding down the stairs, thinking that my dad and my great uncle, in separate states mind you, went to the doctor and on the first office visit, the very first one, both were sent on for further testing, both got their diagnoses in short order, and then were put on medication to help stop disease progression, which everyone knows, when it comes to MS, the sooner the medical intervention the better. ”
“Exactly,” Neesa nodded.
“And so I wait for a doctor who will diagnose me. And while I wait, I research. I’m looking for experimental drug trials to help my dad and uncle, and possibly—probably—me.
One comes up, I offer to help Dad, and Uncle Wilf throw their names in the hat.
Nope, neither is interested in being a guinea pig.
I,” Rylee pressed her hands to her chest, “would make an excellent guinea pig.”
Neesa nodded. “Agreed. Phenomenal guinea pig.”
“Right! And then I find a doctor friend of mine from Afghanistan is doing a research study on an IV drip medication that they believe stops the progression of MS in its tracks.”
“Here in the U.S.?” Neesa asked.
“London. He’s British. Anyway, I reached out to him and sent him my labs and so forth, and he said that he would get me into that study as soon as I have a diagnosis.
He promised me. And he owes me. I didn’t save his life or anything, but I did introduce him to his wife, and he’s still very much in love with her. They have a baby on the way.”
“Aww.” Neesa smiled.
“I know. Wonderful. I’m so happy for them. But here I am with no diagnosis but a lovely offer of anxiety pills and an admonishment that I really should sign up for a yoga class. Neither of which is getting me any closer to the bliss of sitting in a London hospital with a needle shoved in my vein.”
“Which does sound amazing,” Neesa said. “Flowers?”
“Yes, well, by the time I got to the lobby, I had burned off maybe half my fury.”
Neesa nodded.
“I plowed out the front door, thinking cold air was going to serve me well. And by that point, I’d decided to go see the name on the sticky note rather than call and leave a message.”
“Lost me.” Neesa leaned back in her captain’s chair.
Rylee looped her finger in the air. “I’ll circle back.”
“Thank you.”
“I burst out of the building like my hair was on fire.”
“You’d stop, drop, and roll.”
“Seriously, Neesa?”
“Sorry.” She pointed at Rylee, “Continue.”
“Okay, so I burst out the front door like … like something—”
“Angry,” Neesa offered. “I get it. I don’t need a simile.”
“Thank you. I’m out on the street, and I see a cab just sitting there. I make eye contact with the driver. He knows I’ve claimed the cab. I reached for the door handle, and the door was pulled open for me by this guy.”
“A helpful guy, hanging out on the sidewalk, opening cab doors?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. As I replayed it all in my mind, I realized he was getting into the cab when I burst onto the scene.”
“Good use of burst that time,” Neesa said. “And you stole his cab.”
“Seems so.”
Rylee thought back. She was so in her head that she was sort of moving forward using muscle memory.
Then she was in the cab. She had flowers in her lap.
She had the guy's laughing eyes and his nice smile in her awareness. Then the taxi was moving, and the cabbie asked where to go. Rylee had nothing. So she thrust Rose’s blue sticky note at the guy.
He looked down at the name of the medical building.
“I know that one.” And off they went, weaving through lunchtime traffic.
Rylee felt like she’d been rolled by a massive wave.
And when she came up sputtering, she was sitting there, clutching the bouquet, her nose buried amongst the petals, feeling them smooth out her prickly mood.
“But he was a gentleman,” Neesa was asking, bringing Rylee back to the conversation, “or do you think he saw your face in full bull-mode and you frightened the poor guy?”
“Half bull-mode by that point. But one has to assume that the look on my face made him wary of fighting me over the cab. Just to be clear, I wouldn’t have fought over it. I would have apologized.”
“Of course. The flowers?”
“He handed me the bouquet and shut the door without saying a word.”
“You’re kidding.” Neesa blinked. “That’s got to be a hundred-dollar bouquet.”
“Not kidding, and I know, right?” Rylee turned her focus toward the vase. “I wonder why he was hanging out with a spare bouquet.” She sighed loudly. “I’ll never know.”
“Cute?”
“I think so. I—it was strange, and I got flashes of information.” Rylee held her hand over her head.
“He was built like a basketball player. He was wearing a suit, and it fit him well. I remember short blond-ish hair, lawyer kind of feel, maybe? He was blushing pretty hard, though, and he had an easy smile that seemed like a natural part of his face.”
“Huh. So my takeaway is that your guardian angel thought you needed some flowers and provided tall-guy.”
“My thoughts exactly. So,” Rylee planted her feet on the chair to hug her knees, and since she was wearing the sweater dress, Rylee angled so she wasn’t flashing her friend. “And that’s the story of why I’m late to our meeting about attrition.”
“It can wait,” Neesa said. “And so, where were you all this time? Your appointment was hours ago.”
Rylee did a quick recap of what had happened after the doctor left the exam room.
“I went to the place on Rose’s sticky note and sat my happy butt in one of their chairs and waited until the nurse friend got back from lunch and then dealt with her patients, and she finally had a moment for me to hand her the note from my nurse and to get an appointment. ”
“When?”
Rylee grimaced. “Eight months for an appointment.”
“Eight!”
“Neurologist. It’s usually longer. But they put my name in their computer as a priority for cancellations. Just a warning, if they call, I’m gone.”
“I insist. Absolutely. You think the new doctor will do another brush past?” Neesa asked.
“I mean, I think you should consider taking a sick day, stay home, find the top fifty people within an hour’s drive, and make an appointment with every single one of them so you’re not getting the ‘Whiney Woman’ treatment, then having to recover from the indignity and start again.
Number one says anxiety, but the next week you have two other pans in the fire. ”
“Put it in a spreadsheet so once I was diagnosed, I could cancel the rest?”
“Exactly.”
“Tempting,” Rylee said. “Aggressive but tempting. And now, I would very much like to change the subject.”
“Okay, attrition then. Here’s our problem synthesized down to stark terms: We’re losing too many of our crisis field workers.”
“Turnover is too fast for the newbies to feel like they have mastery before those who have the skills down and have figured out the ins and outs leave,” Rylee said. “That overwhelm leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction leads to attrition.”
“I looked at the stats and exit reports,” Neesa countered. “They’re leaving for good reasons: injuries and health issues, pregnancy or young children, spouses moving out of our area.” Neesa ticked off on her fingers.
“Some of it, yes. I think they’re being nice to us.
I know they are because Baji all but said so.
He wanted to make sure that in his exit, he didn’t say anything that would make it seem as if we were responsible for his decision to leave and become a paramedic.
The exit interviews are polite and encouraging, but they aren’t getting at the meat of the issue. ”
“Ideas?” Neesa asked.