Check Your Facts

I once worked with a young woman who -- for a reason I will never understand -- believed that her best bet for impressing people was to acquaint them with an appalling medical history.  She happily discussed a veritable medical journal's worth of diseases, conditions, syndromes, and complaints she had suffered, all of which were exaggerated if not completely fictitious. 

She was too young to have been in the hospital that many months that many times; and a little better medical knowledge might have given some credence to her claims.  She told me, for instance, that she used to have to wear very thick eyeglasses to correct very bad astigmatism but that it went away by itself.  She also said her sinuses were so bad, she had to have them removed.

The small company we worked for was slowly going bankrupt, and while the owners were out trying to sell the product, she and I were sometimes the only ones in the office.  At those times, she concocted attacks and episodes and spells she hoped would get her out of work.  I don't know why she bothered.  It was nothing to me, since I was not her boss.

One day she pretended to faint.  I heard her hit the floor, but I just ignored it.  Eventually she began to moan softly, which I also ignored, but finally, not wanting to waste a good fall, she called out (very weakly, of course), and I was forced to go into her cube where she appeared to be just coming to.  I looked down at her and said something real compassionate, like, "What the hell's your problem?"

My favorite, though, was the time she thought she had not only figured out a way to get around being late for work, but also how to get the rest of the day off.

We both started at 8:00 o'clock, but on this morning she finally came hobbling into the office at 8:30, bravely bearing up under the horrific pain of some significant injury she had sustained.  She had slipped on ice, she said, and lain in the parking lot for over 30 minutes before she mustered the strength to drag herself into the building. 

I believed she had fallen (her knee was scraped, her stocking torn), but I knew it hadn't occurred more than five minutes before.  She counted on me being on time, as I usually was, but that morning I was late coming to work.  If she had been in the parking lot when I arrived at 8:25, I'd have seen her. 

I didn't call her out on that lie because I had a better idea.  She was convinced she had dislocated her spine, or some such nonsense, and thought she should just go on home.  I, however, insisted that such a serious injury required immediate medical attention, whereupon I called an ambulance, which came and took her away.

And I spent the rest of that day grinning to myself.