THE ENVY CLINIC

 
I envy you. Don’t gloat over that. I envy a lot of people. For instance, I envy the patients at the Cleveland Clinic. They are among the 1,700 sickest people in the world. The Clinic is the 4th-best hospital in the country, according to US News & World Report. I envy that #4 ranking.

I wore a white lab coat to the Cleveland Clinic and walked the halls . . .

Desk H-70, Pain Management. The patients there don’t know about real pain. My car has static at 91.5 FM, the jazz station. That is pain.

G-50 Dermatology. The doc took full-body naked pics of me. She’s sick.

C-20, Palliative Care. People are dying but look pretty good. I take drugs and don’t look as good as these folks.

I-20, Eye Clinic. Floaters to my left, floaters to my right. I told the gate attendant at the eye-clinic parking lot, “You’ve got the most dangerous job in the world because half the people coming out of here are blind.”

He said, “Don’t you know it. This is the third time we’ve fixed the turnstile this month.”

I envy that man — the car crashes he must see.

NV-50, Envy Clinic. I’m here for a month.

[fiction]

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