Entropy in a Doctor's Office

 Dr. Williams talked about patients as if he had known them for years. He had. But his face animated more than all the pages of patient history alone should have allowed for. Should he? Could I? I wondered if I could care about the livelihood of the people who’s health was catalogued and contained in manila envelopes stacked in front of me, on a desk in the corner. I got distracted from my homework easily. I found it much more interesting to read the snippets of new information paper clipped to the tops of folders. A new lab report in from a man whose last name was Lovely. He was six years younger than my mom. He had run on a treadmill. Was it a physical? I imagined the stylized images of athletes with athletic apparel—headbands, fancy running shoes, sleeveless tees—running on treadmills with leads connected to important places on their body, as a physician or two in long white lab jackets watched them. This man probably didn’t look anything like what I was imagining. Were they testing asthma? Or maybe his heart. Probably his heart. Heart conditions affect everyone.

I cared about this man now. Was he in danger? Was he worried? Was Dr. Williams worried? Would he be able to continue to work? Did he have any family members? I wondered if I leafed through the folder if I’d see more information and become more entrenched in this man’s life. How could I not? The nurse periodically walked into the office and placed another folder on top of another pile. She never talked about the folders when she walked in. She usually talked to Dr. Williams about another patient, or made some amusing comment about something that was happening in the town that day. Sometimes she didn’t say anything, but that was only when Dr. Williams was talking into his mini-cassette recorder or talking on the phone. And what happened with these folders? There were five or six stacks of them in front of me, each composed of five or six folders. And they were big. Someone had to process them, because they were never the same whenever I walked in. But I never saw them leave the office. They only always came in. It seemed like some sort of unbalanced mechanism that potentially broke important conservation laws that the universe we live in must adhere to, otherwise nothing makes sense and blah blah blah. Like entropy. If Dr. Williams’s office was a cell, and folders were potassium ions, the whole thing was going to lyse.