An abortive attempt at M E D I C A L - RPLOG
Participants
Date
5/1/2018
Log
The office of Chandler Hospital is full, nearly to bursting, with records, medicines, and nearly all variety of administrative anxiety.
In spite of the anxiety inducing cave, which seems as thouhg it might bury anyone foolish enough to enter, the singular staff on duty seems quite confident, a man in his mid twenties, clean cut, wearing a traditional doctor's lab coat sits at the single clear desk, filling out a form quickly, stacking pages into a box as he finishes each one.
Another man, in mid thirties, wearing standard dotor's lab coat, knocks on the door and quietly asks, "Excuse me," then shows his Zephyr ID card that's on a lanyard, "Dr. Randel, from Zephyr... Is this uh, where people need help sorting things out?" He looks at the poor medical clerk with a soft smile and hazel eyes. If it wasn't for the ID card and Zephyr branded coat, he's easily be mistaken for someone already working here.
Arris peeks into Chandler Hospital's office. "Hey, I heard you guys needed help here?" Sie glances around the room, papers stacked to hir height. The gator didn't usually drop by here, except to take the chopper to... the Scrublands, were they called? Sie doesn't remember, but it doesn't matter.
The man nods, finishing up a form, "It's good to see that you've decided to help us out. We've gotten a lot of doctors and nurses who have joined our efforts recently, but unfortunately," He chuckles, "We've not found so many charitable administrators. So, if you can help us get started with the process, we've got to train some up."
"I'm Doctor Amdur, by the way. It's good to meet you Doctor Randel, and you who hasn't yet introduced themself."
"In any case, if I can get you to follow me to the Record Room, two of our trainees are trying to sort through it. You'll be working with them."
Randel looks around and nods, saying slowly, "Yeah... Seems like administrative skills have become a rarity ever since..." He trails off and follows Dr. Amdur, making sure not to delay anything. He looks back at the Gator-morph, checking out hir form before shaking off the distraction and continuing on; waving the other newcomer to follow.
Once Dr. Amdur stands up and begins making his way to the record room, Arris begins to follow after him, nudging Randel on the way. "Wow, an actual doctor, fancy that. Should I also have brought my own labcoat of science and medicine?" Sie chuckles a little. "Name's Arris. I heard yours was... Randal, right?"
Dr. Amdur stands up and leads the two to the records room, a significantly less orderly room than the main administrative office. This is in spite what appear to be the frenzied efforts of a somewhat pudgy man wearing casual clothing, and the more subdued efforts of a woman wearing a fairly practical, but colorful, and positively unidentifiable, getup.
"Randel, Arris, these are your two trainees today, Trisha, and Andrew."
The man looks up at Trisha, the woman at Andrew. "I'll leave you all to get acquainted. If you need me, I've got to go handle the rounds anyway."
Randel holds his smile, but tenses up a bit as he's clearly getting into something he is ironically not that familiar with during his career as a Zephyr field agent, which is management. "Hi," he says with a bit of an up beat tone to the trainees, "Nice to meet you two." and raises a hand to give a wave. After that he gives the place a good look over, partly to know what he got himself into, but also to not cause a landslide of paperwork by accidentally bumping something. He glances over to Arris and mentally is thankfully he dressed properly for the occasion, but knows that at some point that people working here would have to get used to the same kind of 'oddities' he sees regularly back at the Zephyr building.
Arris peeks hir head into the records room, not unlike what sie did with the office. "Oh, er, Trisha and Andrew. I'll... have to try to keep that in mind." Sie lets off a sheepish grin. "My name's Arris. Er, what are we going to be doing now?" The gator follows Randel into the room, taking a glance around as well.
Trisha, being the pudgy man, steps up, looking slightly relieved at the appearance of someone, anyone who might have an idea of what they should be doing, immediately tries to get up, this results in a poorly placed hand knocking into the pile of paperwork and sending it tumbling onto them. Andrew looks on with a mixture of concern and mirth.
Arris winces a little when the stack of sheets drops down on Trisha. "Ouch. Well, that's one way I can demonstrate how good I am at... medicine-y stuff." After Randel's lead, sie helps the man out of the pile of sheets. "Where are we getting this amount of paperwork, anyway? Isn't it just practical to write things down on your comms?
Randel winces and starts to reach for the pile of papers that about to fall, but is sadly way too far away to do much about it and just watches it flop over onto the ground. He sighs deeply and looks at the mess, and they looks over to Arris and says, "By the way, yes I'm Randel. No need to say doctor, wasn't close to one before P-day hit, but did learn a lot afterwards." He heads to the pile and starts to carefully put papers back into the similar order they were presumably were in. "We're to help with the administrative manpower here. Comms and computers can only go so far, given the nanite degradation. Surprised some of the papers haven't turned to powder yet, to be honest." He then looks up and asks, "Is there some book or manual on how things sre supposed to be ran here? I know how it is supposed to go at Zephyr, but I don't want to assume too much."
From underneath the papers, Trisha groans, a part of the pile shifts slightly before Trisha manages to peep out from underneath the pile.
Andrew shrugs, "I don't have any idea why we do it this way. Last time I asked Amdur mentioned something about it being 'traditional', whatever that means."
Andrew helps Trisha to their feet, "Sorry about that," Trisha says.
"It's what always happens when someone startles you though."
"Yeah well-"
"Anyway, these documents are only a month or so old." Andrew interjects, "No time for degredation yet."
"Ah, I see." Arris takes a brief glance at the text on some of the sheets, before looking up between the humans. "...so, what is it that we need to do? If it's buereaucratic stuff, or however your pronounce it, then I'm afraid I'll be out of my expertise." Sie shakes hir head. "It's medical stuff that I'm good at."
Randel pauses at what Andrew said about it being 'traditional' and utters, "Wait a minute..." while looking over what exactly the documents are about.
"Anyway, this stuff is patient records and payment records. We've gotten a lot of business recently, and, Amdur thinks we need to keep track of it." Andrew says, "It's fairly simple, but computers would handle this a lot better. And it wouldn't take so much effort to keep Trish safe."
Trish raises a solitary finger at Andrew, who giggles in response.
Arris chuckles a little. "So, the main problem is that we don't have any computers to do the work for us, I suppose? Or, well, maybe too small a group of people to handle this much paperwork." Sie begins to pick up pieces of paper from the floor, slowly arranging them into a new stack.
Randel looks throuhg paperwork idly, "We do have some computers, but they're... not reliable. They break constantly and we have to send out people to scavenge ever scarcer parts for them."
"We could use some of that Nanite shielding for them, among other things, but it wouldn't change the Survivalist distrust for computers."
Trisha speaks up now "Yeah. They put us here-"
Andrew puts a hand on Trisha's shoulder, which causes them to pause, "Anyway, this is an institutional problem, and we can't do anything about it at the moment"
Randel looks throuhg paperwork idly. Andrew explains, "We do have some computers, but they're... not reliable. They break constantly and we have to send out people to scavenge ever scarcer parts for them."
"We could use some of that Nanite shielding for them, among other things, but it wouldn't change the Survivalist distrust for computers."
Trisha speaks up now "Yeah. They put us here-"
Andrew puts a hand on Trisha's shoulder, which causes them to pause, "Anyway, this is an institutional problem, and we can't do anything about it at the moment"
Randel carefully shuffles through the documents, both spilled over, and the ones still stacked up. He has a look of disbelief as he goes through the records, as if looking for a misplaced paper, but actually he is looking for something else completely. "Ugh..." he finally groans, looking up at the two in sympathy, "I thought maybe this was unnecessary paperwork, and could cut down on some of it, but... but this is a mess!" He rubs his face while thinking a moment before saying, "You guys are just going to have to do things on computers. All this paperwork is a small fortune in of itself. Unless put into a nanite safe room, all of this work would be ruined as well." He starts pacing a bit, as much as the room allows, and goes on to say, "Traditions are one thing, but they are based on practicality as well and this..." and spreads his arms, "This isn't practical. For one, how do you keep all this from going to dust after awhile?"
Arris begins rubbing hir chin. "Well, if you don't have any usable computers and you guys aren't willing to get more... then the other option is to get more manpower on the job." Sie rolls hir eyes. "Aaaaand naturally, we only have two agents present. Brilliant." The gator takes a seat on the desk as sie begins straightening the stack of sheets.
Trisha nods at this.
Andrew shrugs, "Well, this is going to be a lot harder then."
Arris sighs, lying down on the desk as sie thinks. "Well, shit, you guys think we can convince the higher-ups to allow computers in here at least?" Sie props hir head up on an arm. "Honestly, we shouldn't have to deal with these giant stacks of paper. We have technology. Reverting back to cavemen tech is just unreasonable."
Randel mutters, "Hate to be the one to do the data entry on all this." then looks up at Arris laying on the desk, and seems to lose his train of thought. Given how daunting and potentially boring, it is very easy for minds to wander. He gets his thoughts back after a bit and asks, "Where /do/ you store all this? does someone have to copy all this before it decays?"
"There are another five rooms like this." Trisha says. "They're behind some of the stacks."
"Well you'll have to take it up with Amdur" Andrew says, voice completely toneless, "You can probably find him leading residents around the hospital as they gawk at various conditions."
While Arris notices hir teammate gawking at hir lounging on top of the desk, sie decides to not pay it much mind. "Alright, go find... dammit, I've already forgotten his name. But, go find boss-leader-man and try to talk him into using Technology. Alright." Sie rolls off the desk. "let's get going."
Randel looks around the room and admits with a sigh, "This mess has to be sorted before they can start with going computerized. What needs to be done is have all these papers be accessible, as well as safe. We need to tell Doctor Amdur that proper storage needs to be done, as well as hiring on more staff /just/ to handle all of this stuff. Just thinking about all this stuff turning into dust just makes me feel sick... Almost as worse as being outside the bubble." He looks over at the two trainees and asks, "How long have you two been working here?"
"The days and nights just sorta blend together" Trisha says.
Andrew shakes her head, "I started at 9 this morning. Trish started at 10"
"Yeah, a week ago."
"Yeah, then you leave at 2"
The argument continues for some time before they've both said everything they can think to complain about to the other. However long it's been, it's clear that it's been too long for them to like each other.
As the two begin to argue, Arris discreetly slips out of the room and motions for Randel to follow. "Alright, let's follow... what's-his-face. His name sounded middle-eastern, I think, or maybe I'm just being vaguely racist. Anyway, it shouldn't be too difficult to find him."
