Flee The Medical Profession

 

Virus

Part 20 of 30

I'm giving a big shout-out to all the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and med aides out there helping us in this terrible time of Virus. You’ve been great and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that in many ways you’re risking your own good health for the benefit of others. I believe I know how you feel, “Damn Hippocrates and his stinking oath! I could’ve been an architect, or a plumber, and when a pipe goes bad you unscrew it and put in a new one! We’re not trying to save the stupid pipe; it has a lifespan and when it’s over it’s over!”

True, true. But quite foolishly you chose the foolish path anyway -- it’s terrible the ideals we dream up when we’re kids -- and now it’s too late to start over in plumbing school. It’d take an awful lot of bad pipes and a lot of misery catering to homeowners trying to talk you down to a bare nothing just to pay off your medical school debts. Not to mention your embarrassment with parents, loved ones, and your easily depressed children, vulnerable little anemics: “I thought Mommy was a healer...boo hoo.”

OK, we get it, you’re stuck in a rut. And the politics of the profession, along with the reputation of the hospital -- run by cutthroats that thankfully the rest of us never deal with -- is all at stake. And you shall do this dirty business during the Virus because you have no real choice. Say you didn’t have parents, friends, children, etc., you'd really have some options for escaping, disappearing one night and going somewhere. Say everyone knows you’re from up north, you go south, and vice versa depending on how tricky you think it’d be. Then you find an aged plumber, befriend him, and use your medical skills to somehow off his wife and children sequentially and with real stealth, and you take over the business.

But the complications are obvious. It’s like a surgery, where it’s tough to mess up, especially with witnesses, and scalpels bugged with microphones and tiny cameras recording every little thing. You’ve been so pent up with the Virus that it’s easy to go out drinking, then show up the next day -- the place overwhelmed with the Virus and yourself overwrought with worries and all these “I coulda been a plumber” regrets. It’s too much for anyone, especially with the do-gooder reputation you’re supposed to have.

Then there’s the drugs, and that’s a biggie. Pharmaceuticals, I believe is one of the in-group code-words for it. Maybe you can escape tomorrow with a little dose of something, a little mind nookie for a bad day, who’s gonna know? They’re not filming you at home. And say you unscrewed that light in the backyard, you could vanish anywhere, as long as you can shimmy over the concrete blocks stacked up between yourself and the street with the broken streetlight. Then stop by a bar and try to get in in with the real pharmacy. Now you’re lost in your own reverie, Virus be damned! See that? You’re not as trapped as you thought you were. Let the world deal, you’re free!

Take The Prison Pledge

We had a major prison break recently, a little while back, and as it turned out there was an "inside job" component to it. One of the folks working at the prison couldn't be trusted, becoming, let's say, a little too chummy with the inmates. This is something that must never happen again. And I believe it won't, if everyone who works at the prison takes The Prison Pledge.

(Maybe you don't work for a prison, but you still want to be ready for it if called upon. You're invited to recite this opening sentence:)

"If I am ever entrusted with the duties of serving in a prison, I hereby pledge not to become so friendly with the inmates that I will do anything illegal for them, recognizing as I do that that's what put them there in the first place and would put me there with them, only then without a salary."

The rest of you who do work in a prison may now raise your right hand and pledge:

"I pledge that I will not become emotionally attached to the inmates or in any way psychologically dependent on them for validation or my personal sense of self worth. I recognize that their attention and purposes are very likely to butter me up in order to get favors that would lead to their escape, and my complicity in their crimes.

"As a prison employee, I value my job and the well-being of society enough to forgo whatever so-called comfort the inmates can afford. I pledge that I will instead seek out the services of a trained psychologist or counselor, or will use self-help methods such as yoga to clear my mind and increase my sense of self-worth, or, at the very least, will look in the mirror and sarcastically question myself, 'Really? You're really tempted to go down this vile path?'"

One of the worst details of the recent prison break had to do with sexual favors rendered. But if I were to be any more graphic, I'd be getting into some serious blue material, so I'll leave it at that. Except to say that it involved a hole cut in one of the prisoner's long coat for ease of access. Disgusting!

"I pledge not to make myself available to them for any sexual favors or services. This pledge is made in the full knowledge that anyone can be tempted, particularly when you factor in the inmates' great appeal, being murderers, cutthroats, and selfishly calculating one hundred percent of the time. They do not have my best interests at heart. I pledge to remind myself often that the fact that they're locked up for 40 consecutive life sentences indicates that any sexual favors extended might be related to their desire to go free. And that even without an escape plan, prisoners are perpetually horny and not always strictly following safe sexual practices."

Friends, fellow guards, and future wardens among my readers, I sincerely believe that the more of us who take this pledge and abide by it, the safer the world will be. And the more secure our jobs will be.

The Criminal On The Lam

It's always been one of my hobbies to think about how I'd escape, in the event I were ever taken alive and incarcerated. And then what I'd do on the lam, so my efforts wouldn't have been in vain.

So far I haven't had to put any of my plans to the test, somehow having maintained a perfect record of freedom. But it can only pay to be prepared, even for long-shot events, like the Soviet Union reconstituting, invading the United States, setting criminals free and jailing law-abiding civilians, etc.

It's always surprising how many people go to jail. I read the crime column in the paper, and, Hey, Stupids, Do you not realize by now Wal-Mart is watching for shoplifters? Or, Hey, Idiots getting drunk at home, Do you not realize the police prosecute people for domestic disputes? It actually pays to live a fairly decent life, although, yes, it does take away your opportunities to escape.

I've seen a few easy escapes on TV. Like in The Day The Earth Stood Still, somehow the entire military -- and federal authorities -- can't keep Klaatu in jail. In fact, they're totally incompetent, since Gort simply burns a hole in the wall and carries him away and no one at the jail even notices. Or in The Lone Ranger, I think it is, they pull the jail wall down with a donkey and rope and escape and no one in the area sees or hears it.

I wouldn't expect an escape today to be easy. With modern technology -- video monitoring and platinum deadbolts -- they're making it a lot harder. You about have to escape before you get in, or make long term plans to seduce a jail employee and get them to help you escape in the dirty laundry. But damn the luck if they happen to do laundry onsite! It's almost enough to make you forgo crime all together...

OK, getting to the recent article in The Squeaky Wheel, two escaped but only one really made it. Of course the jail in Grease, Iowa, is one of your older facilities. They have enough heat ducts, large vents, and broken registers, they may as well put a revolving door at the outlets. It was built in the 1890s, back when criminals more or less abided by the honor system.

So let's say I get out of their jail, and I'm the one who isn't recaptured. How do I manage my affairs on the lam, to keep it that way? Naturally, I avoid all bars, tattoo parlors, whorehouses, and other seedy places. I don't phone home. I don't use an ATM. (The fees are terrible anyway.) It's going to be a matter of keeping my head down and my nose clean. If I live on the south part of town, I'm on the north side. If my moll (my main squeeze) is on the west side, I'm on the east. And so forth.

The best place to live on the lam, in my opinion, would be near the railroad tracks. You can always hop a freight, especially if it's the middle of the night. And again, you always use misdirection. If your family lives east of town, you go west. Or, perhaps this is trickier, if you family lives east, you could go east, since they'd assume you were going west. And maybe I'd have to rethink the areas of town I'd go to, above, and do just the opposite of what they'd assume.

Of course it'd be good to get different clothes. You can't be running around in orange. Even the cops in Grease aren't dumb enough to see that as counter-intuitive; that's a dead giveaway. I'd wish it were summer and people's laundry was on the line. Then I could dress up in bib overalls, hang out at the coffee shop, and talk sports, and no one would ever suspect! Although maybe jail would be funner.

The basic rule for living on the lam is always to do it right and make the right choices. If there's even the slightest chance of making a mistake, instead back up and don't do it. An ounce of prevention... You haven't got the luxury of screwing up... One strike and you're out. Think! Always think of your next move, run through all the options and possible consequences, then go with the best choice. If you can easily envision being captured for doing A-B-C, by all means do X-Y-Z instead.

That's how I'd maintain my freedom, by never making a mistake. Great advice.