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Chapter 1: McKenzie
Steppingoutofmyclunky car, I looked at the large, expansive hospital in front of me. This place would be the first job I had that didn’t seem like a dead end.
And I’d be working here as a lowly receptionist.
I couldn’t be too upset. It’d at least give me something to do while I tried applying for jobs in my field. But finding anything that’ll hire an art graduate like me was a nightmare within itself. That was why, after the fifth rejection letter, I decided to say screw it and use my minor to get into some administrative field.
The job was pretty good too. It was a receptionist, administrative clerk, and coder for the hospital.
Apparently, this place needed someone who could do all three. Thankfully, because of a job I had back in the day where I rushed papers back and forth and some minor medical coding, I had everything necessary to be at least qualified for the job.
“Okay, so they told me to go down to the third floor where HR was…got it,” I said.
They didn’t tell me where I would be posted, but I assumed it’d be a receptionist for one of the wards and not a general receptionist. Sure enough, when I walked in, a blonde, overly preppy face grinned at me with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. They almost looked fake.
“Hi, there! And you are?”
“Oh, McKenzie Williams. I’m supposed to be the new receptionist and clerk over at—”
“Oh, yes! HR told me to tell you just go up to the third floor. They’ll set you up with that office, hun. You’ll be on the seventh floor. The geriatric ward! That’ll be fun,” she said.
Probably about as fun as I expected it to be.
I gave her a sheepish grin as I walked towards the elevator, pressing the button and closing the door. As I stood there, watching the floors slowly creep, the elevator dinged, and I walked inside.
The HR lady immediately raced over, ushering me back to the elevator. “There you are! You’re late. A is going to be so pissed when he finds out.”
A? Who the hell was that? And why did they refer to their boss with a letter instead of their actual name?
When I got up, my eyes widened at the scope of the work.
“Oh shit,” I said out loud.
Piles of file folders sat there, waiting to be put away. And I noticed that as a couple were moved, but it looked like a job very few people did.
“All right, so you’ll get a better brief later, but your job is to put away these files and also take the phones,” she explained.
“What about coding for insurance?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Right now, this file folder situation is what you need to worry about. And remember, don’t let people wait too long before answering.”
Without another word, the clearly overworked HR lady disappeared, leaving me with the behemoth in front of me.
I wasn’t sure I was even getting paid enough to look at this. I stared at the giant pile of files, and it looked at me like it was trying to test me.
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t get a degree just to be some sort of file bitch,” I muttered to myself.
Then again, not like anything else was hiring. I tried to get into other offices, but they didn’t pay nearly as much as the hospital. So, I didn’t know what else to say other than to do the job and get it done.
I started handling the first set of files that sat there, beginning to be taken care of the entire time, counting down the minutes until I was done. But then, about an hour into the shift, the first phone rang.
“Coming!” I cried out.
I rushed on over during the third ring.
“Hi there, McKenzie with Moore hospital here,” I said.
The woman on the line asked to be transferred to a lab on this floor. So, I pressed the button, transferring it.
