It all started when Nurse Quincy lost a bet to a fellow nurse. A silly bet—but we’ll get to that. The punishment was simple: she had to work a full shift with Dr. Beavers.
The rest of the nurses were delighted. Opportunities to one-up Quincy didn’t come often, and they weren’t about to waste this one.
Don’t get me wrong—Quincy was well-liked, in the same way people like broccoli or a good pair of scissors: undeniably useful, quietly underappreciated, and just a little easy to resent.
Which brings us to Dr. Beavers. He was a numbers guy. Administrators loved doctors who stacked their patient lists. Beavers showed up on time, and like a tornado, he tore through his daily list, leaving behind bewildered or at times hair- on- end patients—a trait that might remind you of Bugs Bunny. But the similarity ended there. He lacked the cunning, the sarcasm, and certainly the quick wit. Like Bugs Bunny, he was quick to retreat from areas of brewing conflict. Another reason, his disappearance was puzzling.
Quincy, on the other hand, was reliably generous with her trademark scowls.
Still, anyone who knew them both would say the same thing: Quincy got the job done. Beavers’ unshakable calm came not from confidence, but from a remarkable inability to notice the storm clouds gathering around him.
Anyone who thinks that being oblivious is a handicap for a doctor would be right. Yet Dr. Beavers had achieved “success” at a young age and was, in fact, the clinic’s lead physician. But as he was soon to discover, his rise came with a series of falls, each steeper than the last.
This clinic was unique—not because of high cure rates, affordable health care, or short wait times. It was unique because of a phenomenon the health system administration called Net Zero: for six straight years, no physician had been hired, and neither of the two doctors had left.
“Unheard of in the twenty-first century,” boasted Mr. RASH, the head honcho of the system. His real name was long, but he intensely disliked titles like CEO or COO. To him, they lacked panache and failed to capture the swagger of his remarkable work. So he renamed his role “Rock Star Administrator of Hospitals.”
The nurses, with their inbuilt genius for alphabet soups—SBAR, I-PASS, AIDET—pounced on this with delight. Behind his back, they whispered: Mr. RASH is here.
And Mr. RASH was the last person to see Dr. Beavers alive.
On that fateful morning, Quincy arrived at the clinic at 6 a.m. sharp. Adept at multitasking, she sipped her cold coffee while brooding and vengefully grinding any ice cube that dared climb the oversized straw. She paced the empty clinic, re-enacting Lamaze classes from two decades ago.
“I’ll kill Beavers if he does to me what he did to Siri,” she growled. Fernand Lamaze’s spirit beat a hasty retreat.
Quincy was referring to Beavers’ regular nurse, Siri, who was out on medical leave for uncontrolled smiling—the only way she knew how to cope with mounting stress.
Then Quincy's face broke into a sardonic grin when she remembered how she got out of jury duty a week prior.
Dr. Beavers’ disappearance caused a furor. Work nearly ground to a halt. All the physician duties fell on the shoulders of the clinic’s only remaining doctor: Dr. Joy.”
