Chapter 5 #2
“That’s highly unlikely,” he says dryly. “This address is mostly for admin stuff. Patients who need to reach me go through Celine, and I have a separate account for my personal email. People I want to communicate with have my cell number, and they text.”
“Okay. But even still, I can’t . . .” I trail off when I catch his expression. Dr. Malone is amused. There’s a curve to his lips—he’s almost smiling— and the shocker is, it looks good on him.
“You said you’d do anything I wanted, Alexandra,” he points out. “And what I want you to do is deal with this inbox. You’ve done the hospital’s confidentiality training, right?”
“Yeah.” Confidentiality training took up an entire day of last week’s orientation.
“So go ahead and read the emails, and delete anything you don’t think a reasonable person would care about. That should take care of at least half.”
“Half?” I echo.
“Sure,” he says. “You have a hospital email address, right? You’ll see how much spam we get.”
“Yeah, I have an email. But IT said it may take a couple weeks before I’m added to all the mailing lists.”
“Well, you’ve got something to look forward to,” he says dryly. “There’s an amazing volume of spam. Then there are some where the reply is obvious, and you can look after those yourself. The rest you can stick in a folder for me to review.”
“Um, okay.”
I must look flustered, because his smile broadens. “Let’s go through the first few together and see how you do.”
He clicks open an email. “One of the elevators is out of service,” he says. “They’re trying to get it repaired. Now, Alexandra, does that seem like something I need to know?”
I shake my head.
“Very good.” He deletes the message and opens the next. “Now, this one is from the fundraising committee, trying to sell me tickets to a fifty-fifty raffle. Keep or trash?”
I read the answer in his expression. “Trash,” I say confidently.
“Gambling’s a vice,” he deadpans, clicking to delete it. “Ah,” he says, studying the next email. “This one’s more of a challenge. Dr. McDonald thinks it’s unfair that he only gets one and a half days of operating room time per week, while Dr. Chua gets two full days. What do you think?”
“Uh, I’d keep that one for you to review.”
Dr. Malone shakes his head. “Every single surgeon in the department wants more OR time, but there is none. The issue comes up every month at the division meeting, and I explain that I’m not planning to change the schedule.
But people like to vent their unhappiness into my inbox, so I get a few emails a week about it. So you can delete those too.”
“Really?”
I must look unhappy about this approach, because he relents. “I guess if you really want, you can reply and say there’s no more OR time.”
“Okay.”
“All right. Moving on. Oh, this one’s from the CEO. He’s posted something new to his blog—”
“The CEO has a blog?”
“Apparently,” he says with a shrug.
“What does he write about?”
Dr. Malone chuckles. “Damned if I know, that one’s a delete. Okay, next. Dr. Cunningham’s complaining that the ER doctors are giving him too many unnecessary consults. What would you do with this?”
“Keep for you,” I say confidently.
“Nah, this is a minor complaint, Alexandra, I can’t review all of these. In an average week, I get emails complaining about the residents, the OR nurses, the ward nurses, the porters, the pharmacists, and sometimes the patients.” He pauses. “Sometimes also the parking lot.”
“The parking lot?”
He nods. “Yeah. Admin got rid of the doctors’ lot last year, so now we have to park in the main garage with everyone else. Some doctors still aren’t over it.”
“Really?”
“Yep. If they get stuck behind a really slow driver, it can add five minutes to their day.”
“Right. That sounds really . . .” I trail off and search for a diplomatic way to say what I’m thinking.
“Whiny and entitled?” Dr. Malone supplies. “Yep. But it’ll be your problem now, Alexandra. I’m giving you the authority to deal with all slow driving complaints.”
“I could suggest people walk to work,” I suggest. “Or take transit. It would be good for their health and the climate.”
“Brilliant,” he says. “I knew you’d be good at this.”
He’s being sarcastic, but the praise still sends a dart of warmth down to my toes.
“For most of the other minor complaints, like unnecessary ER consults, you can ask them to fill out an incident report form,” he says.
“Sure. Uh, what’s an incident report form?”
“One of management’s best ideas. It’s an online form that’s such a pain to fill out that no one bothers, unless they think something’s particularly outrageous. So I do review those, eventually.”
“Okay.” There’s a sort of logic there, I guess. “But what if a message actually seems urgent? I’ll keep the important ones in a folder, of course, but is there a way I should let you know?”
There’s a beat of silence while he thinks about this. “You can text my cell,” he finally says. He rattles off his number, and I scramble to plug it into my phone.
“Thanks. Uh, I’ll send you a text, so you’ll have my number.”
“Sure,” he replies without enthusiasm. He probably can’t imagine a situation in which he’d want to contact me.
I send him a message anyway: Alexandra Parker (assistant).
His phone pings as my text lands, but he doesn’t pull it out to read it.
“Okay,” I say, standing to go back to my desk. “I’ll get started on that right away.” I pause when I think of another question. “For the replies, do I sign them from you? Or write something like Alexandra Parker, Assistant to Dr. Malone?”
“Probably the second one,” he replies. “That way, if people don’t like your answers, they’ll know who to blame.”
“Right.”
I must look anxious, because his expression softens a little. “Relax, Alexandra. Anything you’re not sure about, just keep for me to review.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Yep.” He turns back to his computer, and I escape to the outer office to tackle his inbox.