Dozens of residents and medical students crowded the small on-call room, sitting on the couches, leaning on the backs of them, perching on the bunkbeds, standing in small knots, and speaking in low, grim voices.
The on-call room was never this crowded. Most of the time, only a few people were napping or cramming food into their faces before they bolted back to the floor to continue their training. Sometimes, it was empty and silent.
Dr. Andy Kumar stopped in the doorway, being careful not to slam anyone with the back of the door.
This couldn’t be good.
Indeed, Andy had never seen anything like this despondent herd of white-coated doctors.
She grabbed the sleeve of a friend of hers who happened to be standing near the door. They had known each other since their freshman year of high school and managed to go to medical school and get their residencies together. “Raji, what’s going on?”
“The ‘creative accounting,’ and ‘revenue optimization,’ has been deemed to be Medicare fraud,” Raji whispered back, her lip piercing bobbing as she spoke. “The government pulled all the Medicare funding, effective immediately.”
“Oh, no,” Andy said, staring into the room. The rumors had been swirling under every conversation for weeks. Medicare funding is a huge part of every hospital’s budget. “Have they announced how many physicians will be laid off yet?”
Raji shook her head. “Not a number. HR said thirty-five percent, though.”
At least fifteen people in this small lounge were going to be looking for jobs soon. Or more. Probably many more because the hospital would honor their commitments to their senior staff first. “When?”
“Friday,” Raji said. “They’re going to tell people in the next few days, and their last day will be Friday.”
Andy was safe, she thought. She was paid via a training fellowship with a substantial amount of private funding, and she worked in the hospital’s clinics area three afternoons a week, which more than covered her salary. She was a net plus for them, not a liability.
Raji gestured to another mutual friend of theirs. “Jules thinks that she’s okay because she’s a Howard Hughes scholar, but Henrietta thinks that the HHMI’s will be the first to go because the hospital can place them in other training programs.”
Andy’s training program was funded by grants, too. “Have they issued any guidance?”
“Nope, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve been on the horn all morning with UCLA’s cardiac program.” Raji cracked chests. “They have a pediatric hepatic transplant program, too. I asked for you. Why don’t you talk to them? We can move west together.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Andy recited.
Why had she said that? It was like her mouth had made the cowardly decision for her.
Andy rephrased it as, “I mean, I should wait until I hear something.”
A small part of her heart woke up at the thought that her fellowship might be terminated. She could do just gastroenterology, a much calmer specialty than transplant, or just general medicine. She could open a practice, make more money, and work many, many fewer hours. Maybe she could read a book or knit something like she used to like to do.
Maybe she could treat ulcers and reflux and not watch one out of four of her patients die every year.
“Early bird gets the wormy, wormy fellowship,” Raji said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Andy swallowed hard. “I just came in to grab my lunch.”
Raji and Andy peered over the crowd toward the dorm-sized fridge in the corner. Chen was sitting on it, eating his daily lunch of fish and cabbage, from the smell of it, and lots of people would have to be shoved out of the way for Andy to make her way over there.
She said, “I’ll just grab a chai in the atrium.”
Maybe she would lose weight if she skipped lunch, anyway.