As
welfare institutions are cut down and public services get deregulated,
private health care has become something that many people must resort
to. This is why, inter alia, Danielson's Veterinary Hospital
regrettably has popped up and become a less pricey alternative,
and on top of that next door to us.
They have embarked upon another area, about which they haven't
even the slightest knowledge, either. Not only have countless pets
experienced some inferno within Danielson's walls before passing
on. Now humans too are offered the same medieval 'care'
at the clinic. Sick people come to Danielson's to get (what
they think is) the best nursing available. But when realising what
kind of treatment they really get it's too late, unfortunately.
It appears as if people with injunctions against carrying on business
and others, who for various reasons have been fired from similar
institutions (though Danielson's really isn't similar to
anything), immediately become employed at DVH after a summary interview,
where the single question made is 'what would you like to work
as?'. Oh, as a cardiologist! Jolly good!
Unscrupulous scientists, sadists and various washouts therefore
are on the payroll. Already the very first patient's complaints
were so loud and intense that they didn't dare to discharge
her, which turned out to be the only useful policy in order to keep
up the business.
We
got this information from a man who one day coiled into our editorial
office through the ventilator shaft. Before we realised that he
was a person and no vermin, we had already sprayed him all over
with insecticide.
-
I crawled out through the ventila…arrgh…he rattled and died in our
arms. On his clean-shaven and scarred head we found a stamp mark:
"Property of Intensive Care". We sent Rolf, who only was
lounging on the office floor anyway (well, now he has found eternal
rest), to the hospital to find out what the man's last words
were actually referring to. When Rolf came back, reporting that
journalists were denied entrance there, we broke his arm and sent
him back once again.
At
first he managed to smuggle out a few furtively taken pictures and
some secret staff interviews, but then his reports suddenly ceased
to drop in. We still don't know what might have happened to him,
but the pieces started to fit together when we saw the last picture
he slipped out…
Rolf's unfinished staff interviews:
An interview with kitchen assistant Gretchen Pickle:- We use
to call the kitchen 'the lab'. 'Cause we don't use
neither cookery books nor recipes here, but every day we are experimenting
to invent new exciting dishes. You see, as we have no budget at
all, we have to serve whatever we can find. Actually, it's real
fun to see what happens when you mix different things. Mostly it
gets no good, but we have a jolly good time, and that's what
matters, right? You need a good laugh sometimes. The work-mates
are nice and there's really a very good spirit here. What I
don't like, though, are all those stray dogs that run around
here in the kitchen. I want them quiet and still in the cauldron.
- It's been said that a lot of food is wasted in hospitals?
-
Not here! We've solved that problem smartly by only serving
one meal a week. And then nothing's left on the tables, no cutlery,
plates or cups either, you know. Well, there's really nothing
wrong with their appetite.
Heinz Ketchüpp, the 'Cardiologist',
says:
- If I like it here?! Jawohl, thankz for azking, I like it very
much, not zo much to complain about, nein. - What training have
I? Well, training, what do you know, I ztarted in ze kitchen where
I mashed tomatoez, and they zaid I did that zo well that I was tranzferred
here to Cardiology. But I ztill do zome extra work in ze kitchen.
Jaa, it'z good juzt ztanding there chopping, without having
to think about what you do. Well, there'z not a lot of that
otherwize either.
- Is it true that you immigrants must do all the dirty work?
- HAI!, says back specialist Lum Bah Gho, ex sumo wrestler.
- How come that you became a back specialist?
- Formerly I wrenched backs out of joint. I still do that, but vice
versa, giggles the merry and jovial Lum while sipping greedily at
a bowl of rice oil and scrutinising my crooked back hopefully. Then
I attended Bangin Ze Back's Institute in Sukiyaki for 26 years.
When a fellow student informed me that the backs in Europe were bad,
I packed my bag instantly. After working some time at Sonya's
Massage Parlour, where our opinions about erotic massage clashed,
I ended up here. I'm proud, I was taken up in Guinness Book of
Records for a job I performed recently.
- Adam Apple, you're said to be the only one here at DVH having
a decent education. Is that correct?
- Yes, that's right, I'm a photographer.
- But what on earth brought you here to Otolaryngology?
- Why, I made a film called "Deep Throat", and
it appealed to the hospital director enough for him to urge me to
start working here instead. And I really like it here.
- No trouble at all?
- Well, it would be the piecework, more or less always we give the
wrong treatment, and that might become a bit messy. But, on the
other hand, I'm only here to make money…
Terrifying and harrowing to read this! Rolf never made it to that
ventilator, supposedly.