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A Dose of Mistaken Identity

J. Rollins Hughes

    “Mr. Wiltenham? Time for our medications,” the overly amicable plump young nurse stated as she entered the room quietly on her soft-soled shoes carrying a little paper cup in which she purportedly had some medications.
    “What medications?” the elderly gentleman in the bed with all sorts of wires and tubes attached to or running into him from a plethora of machines and dangling drip bags surrounding his bed. “You can take your medications, but the only ones I get I must ask for, which I haven’t. And who is this ‘Wiltenham’ fellow?”
    “Why you are, Mr. Wiltenham. Now, let’s not be silly, and just take our medications,” she said, pouring water out of the carafe on the bedside table into a cup with a straw sticking out of it in a most disconcerting manner.
    “I’m not ‘Wiltenham’, young woman. My name is ‘Carbet’.”
    “Don’t be silly now, you silly man. Here, take your medications,” she insisted, holding the medications cup in one hand and the cup of water in the other.
    “I haven’t had any medications since I’ve been in this prison of yours, woman. Check my chart,” the old man grumbled.
    “Now I am not going to have any of your silliness, you hear?”
    “Nor am I going to have any of yours. Check my chart. Mr. Carbet doesn’t have any medications unless he needs them for pain, which I don’t.”
    “Okay, you silly man. I’ll check your chart,” she reneged tolerantly, and, setting the cup of water and the little paper cup containing the medications on the bedside table, went to the foot of the bed where the chart was hanging. “See, it says right here that... wait a minute... what happened to the. . .”
    “I told you, woman, I don’t have any medications,” Carbet thundered.
    “Don’t take those medications!” she exclaimed, hurrying back to the head of the bed with her hand outstretched as if to stop him should he attempt to snatch up the medications and swallow them. Snatching the paper cup of medications off the bedside table, she stated, “I’ll be right back.”
    “You better hurry. I’m terminal,” Carbet grumbled.
    Within a very short period of time another older nurse appeared and asked, “Now, Mr. Wiltenham, what is our problem?”
    “‘Our’ problem? The problem, my good woman, is your problem. First, my name is Carbet, not Wiltenham. Second, I have had no medications since I have been in this infernal prison you people persist in calling a hospital. Third, I want to know when nurses no longer were required to read to become nurses.”
    “Oh, now, of course we know how to read. Let’s not be silly,” this new older nurse remarked with a most benevolent smile and girlish titter.
    “Then read my chart,” the elderly man said, pointing to his feet, “and you’ll find that my name is Carbet and I am not supposed to have any medications unless I request them.”
    “Okay. Okay, if that will make you feel better,” she said waving him off with her hand.
    “Feel better? I’m terminal, you nincompoop,” he blustered. “I should be home in my own bed letting the life ooze out of me, but my loving children don’t have the stomach to watch that happen. Ergo, you get the pleasure of watching me pass on to my final reward.”
    “Okay. I understand. Just let me read your chart here,” she said impassively.
    Moments later, she turned and hurriedly left the room without a word.
    “Danged incompetent nincompoop,” Carbet muttered.
    Within a half hour, the older nurse returned with the younger nurse, and said as she entered the room, “Well, Mr. Wiltenham, we have found your chart. Sorry about the mix-up.”
    “For the last time, I am ‘Carbet’, not ‘Wiltenham’,” Carbet groused.
    “No, sir, we have found your chart and you are Mr. Wiltenham,” the older nurse explained, “and you’re here for a Colonoscopy, scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
    “I am here to expire. Die. Pass away. I am terminal,” Carbet explained emphatically.
    “No you’re not. You will have a simple procedure tomorrow morning and then you’ll go home and live a long and fruitful life,” the older nurse said patronizingly.
    “I have lived a long and fruitful life, thank you very much, and it is coming to an end, you fool.”
    “Now. let’s not be naughty. You must take your medications to prepare you for the procedure,” the older nurse said, while the younger nurse nodded in agreement.
    “If that is all I am in here for, you nincompoops, why am I hooked-up to all these infernal machines?” Carbet inquired.
    “Well, now, I have to admit, that is strange. Someone must have made an expensive mistake,” the older nurse remarked and then tittered.
    “Yes, my children for sending me to this infernal hellhole,” Carbet bellowed.
    “Dad?” a voice that was not one of the three in the room intruded into the discussion.
    “Melinda? Thank God you have come,” Carbet said.
    “What is going on?” Melinda asked of the nurses.
    “We are having a bit of a problem getting your father, Mr. Wiltenham, to take his medications,” the young nurse explained.
    “My father is Mr. Carbet, not Wiltenham,” Melinda pointed out.
    “Oh,” said the older nurse, “then you must be in the wrong room.”
    “Oh, no I’m not. That man in the bed is my father, Mr. Warren Carbet,” Melinda insisted.
    The two nurses looked at Mr. Carbet and then back at Melinda. The older nurse then looked down at the chart and up at Melinda again, and asked, “Are you sure?”
    “I want to see Dr. Halverson immediately,” Melinda stated.
    “Why would you want to see Dr. Halverson?” the older nurse inquired naively.
    “Because he is my father’s doctor, of course.”
    “Uh, no. Your father’s doctor is Dr. Witham,” the older nurse said, pointing to the chart she held in her hand.
    “That’s not my chart,” Carbet stated. “My chart is hanging on the foot of my bed. I have been trying to tell them that, Melinda.”
    “Of course it’s your chart, Mr. Wiltenham,” the older nurse persisted.
    Melinda looked at the chart hanging on the end of the bed in which her father lay dying.
    “What is that?” she asked in a sarcastic tone, gesturing to the chart hanging on the bed.
    “Someone made a mistake and put the wrong chart in your father’s room,” the younger nurse said, reaching for the chart, but Melinda hurriedly grabbed it and read the first page.
    “This is my father’s chart,” she said, tapping the chart she had taken off the foot of the bed.
    “No, dear, this is your father’s chart,” the older nurse said, holding up the chart she had in her hand, “and it says right here that he is Mr. Wiltenham.”
    “Am I to understand that you feel your chart has more credence as to the identity of my father than I do?” Melinda asked rather heatedly and snidely.
    Carbet lay in his bed, wires and tubes all about him, and got interested. He knew Melinda
    Carbet was not one you wanted to mince words with.
    “What I am saying is that these charts are sacrosanct; the very bibles of this hospital,” the older nurse said with a lot of pride. “We must go by them or we would have a mess on our hands,” .
    “Who are you?” Melinda asked.
    “I am Mrs. Whitney, the head nurse on this floor,” the older nurse gloated proudly
    “Well, you had better find Dr. Halverson in the next fifteen minutes, head nurse Whitney, and get him up here, you bumbling incompetent, or I am going to put this facility through a litigation mess like they have never experienced before.”
    “And she can,” Mr. Carbet remarked. “She’s a powerful attorney, you know.”
    “Dad? Let me handle this, please,” Melinda reprimanded with authority.
    “With pleasure, my dear,” Carbet responded with a gleeful smile.
    At that point the younger nurse scurried out of the room, wanting no part of this fiasco. As she did, she noticed Dr. Halverson at the Nurse’s Station going over some charts.
    She hurriedly went up to him and explained they were going to be sued by a confused lady in room four-sixteen and he needed to get in there right away.
    He handed her the chart he was reading and hurriedly went down the hall to the room.
    As he entered, he said, “Hello, Melinda. What’s the problem?”
    “Outside of the fact that I am in this funny farm?” Mr. Carbet questioned and got a smirk out of Halverson.
    “Dr. Halverson, these people seem to be suffering from some illusion, or delusion,” the older nurse, who had remained in the room, commented.
    “What illusion, or delusion is that, Nurse Whitney?” Dr. Halverson asked.
    “They insist that Mr. Wiltenham here is a Mr. Carbet.”
    “And that’s a problem, because?”
    “Well, we have been trying to give him his medication in preparation for his Colonoscopy procedure tomorrow and he won’t take it,” she explained.
    “Mr. Wiltenham’s medication for his procedure tomorrow,” Melinda pointed out.
    “Nurse Whitney, may I have a word with you in the hall, please?” Dr. Halverson asked.
    “Well, of course, Doctor,” she replied huffily and went out in the hall.
    Dr. Halverson turned to Melinda and said, “I’ll only be a minute.”
    “Good luck with that nincompoop, Doc,” Mr. Carbet carped and got a benevolent smile back from Halverson.
    Five minutes later, Dr. Halverson returned and apologized profusely for the error.
    “Error?” Mr. Carbet asked. “That’s what you call it? An error? These nincompoops would have expedited my passing by draining my life out of me from a more convenient portal. That’s an error?”
    “Now, Warren, you have to stay calm and not be getting upset,” Dr. Halverson cautioned.
    “Why, Doc? Because I might die?” Carpet asked snidely.
    Melinda looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. Then she asked to talk to Dr. Halverson out in the hall.
    “If he were home, how much shorter would his life be?” she asked after they had gone into the hall.
    “That’s hard to say. Without the machines to monitor him, or even with them, everyday is a shot in the dark.”
    “Well, I can’t take this place any longer,” Melinda remarked. “I want him released and I’ll take him home. We’ll get hospice care for him and let him let him live what’s left of his life in peace. There is no excuse for him having to put up with the nonsense in this facility.”
    “Now, Melinda, this is a very good hospital and...”
    “Very good hospitals are responsible for killing upwards of thirty thousand patients a year out of incompetence, Dr. Halverson. They hire some formidably incompetent people to do the necessary chores that should be done with competence. They have people’s lives in their hands. Mixing up charts is one of the more ignominious incongruities. What would have happened if
    they had gotten him to take the medications that they wanted him to take?”
    “At the worst he would have suffered diarrhea. The medications are given to evacuate the patient’s intestines so that the internal areas are more clearly visible.”
    “A man in his condition with diarrhea? It would have ended him,” Melinda pointed out.
    “Well, at this stage of his illness, almost anything could be the end of him,” Dr. Halverson remarked.
    “So his being in his own home is no worse than him being here?”
    “I cannot protest, with any verity, that is not correct.”
    “Then I’ll take him home. I don’t care what my sister and brother say, he deserves to be there,” Melinda stated.
    Dr Halverson sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll prepare the paper work before I leave and get the nurses to prepare him for transport.”
    “Hopefully not the two that were in there earlier. That would surely kill him,” Melinda responded.
    “You will keep me informed?” Dr. Halverson asked as he moved toward the nurses’ station.
    “Certainly,” Melinda answered and went back in the room to tell her father the good or bad news, depending on his or your viewpoint.

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