Charlie's Requiem Novella Read Free

provided him with his specialty certification. I spent four years at Florida, getting my degree in chemistry while medaling on the school’s swim team. We won several SEC championships while I was there. Dr. Kramer likes that. We both bleed orange and blue.
    Dr. Kramer makes the buying decisions for the practice and has more influence on the other two doctors than I ever could. If you’re in sales in the sunshine state, it helps if you are a Florida grad. And unlike most of the other salespeople in my profession, I have the scientific background to be intelligent about my products. It also helps that the drugs I sell really work. It makes my job much easier. And because Dr. Kramer likes me, I get good treatment from the staff. It also helps that I bring goodies for them; and doughnuts are always well received.
    Peg came back to the desk and waved, holding up two fingers. Two minutes or twenty minutes to see the doctor. Only time will tell, so I smiled and waved back. I scanned the table beside me, bypassing many of the uninteresting magazines, finally finding one that I could read without wondering if the world would survive humanity. There is only so much celebrity gossip and mundane scandal you can read about before realizing that we worship people that don’t deserve our time, let alone our entertainment money. I’ve been in the operating room, watching a cardiologist thread a microscopic camera into a man’s ventricle and remove a life-threatening blood clot so that he could go home to his wife and children. I’ve watched emergency room staff restart dead hearts, breathe life back into drowned children and perform tasks that two generations ago would have been considered miracles. I never find them on the cover of the magazines. I guess if they got into a fight at a Las Vegas nightclub...
    “Charlie! The doctor can see you now!” Peg said. So it was two minutes after all.
    I rolled my cart behind me as I made my way back to his private office. Others in my profession have warned me about certain offices and some specific physicians having less than a professional approach to our relationship. In some offices, it can be a bit unnerving meeting with the doctor in his private room. One of the reasons I was hired was because of my age, as well as my background. And let’s not kid around, you can get hired based on your looks. But I know Dr. Kramer and he is a good man and I’ve never gotten a bad vibe from him. Being fit and young, I can engender unwanted conversations. When you sell, you have to sell yourself as well as your product. Some doctors take that the wrong way. So I go by Charlie, which is short for Charlotte. Why Charlie? Hey, it’s just too prissy.

Chapter 3
    Day 1
    Azalea Park Medical Clinic
    Orlando, FL
    The sunny day was pleasantly warm as Carol left the Urgent Care center. Lunch could not have come quick enough given the number of emergencies they had to handle this morning. With the flu season ramping up, the clinic had seen more than the typical number of runny nosed, body aching and lung hacking patients stumble in for treatment. All of these patients had failed to have the flu vaccine and most had waited too long to get to the clinic for the Tamiflu to be of optimal effect. Tamiflu is an anti-viral medication rather than a vaccine. For it to work on the flu virus, the patients needed to start taking the drug less than 48 hours from the onset of symptoms. Most of the patients had shown up after their symptoms had peaked three to five days into their infection, meaning the medication probably wouldn’t help all that much.
    She had 30 minutes to grab a bite to eat. She left her lab coat in the office, instead wearing her green scrubs without cover. It was warm enough on this November day to forego her white jacket, although HIPPA laws required that she was supposed to have a cover when leaving the office. She justified this oversight because she was going to use the drive through at a local fast