Kevin had written it in blue marker on the whiteboard Friday afternoon. Dolores read it over her coffee Saturday morning, squinting a little at Kevin’s crappy handwriting.
UPDATE FAIL PROCEDURE
- Try update ONE more time (not three!!)
- If same error → STOP
- Green tag: RUNNING — UPDATE PENDING, date, initials
- Enter in asset system
- Return to floor
- Call vendor, get case #, write case # on tag
He had drawn a smiley face at the bottom. Somebody, probably Joe, had drawn a red circle with a line through it around the smiley face.
The “not three” was for her. Kevin was always teasing her. She liked him, but not enough to do anything about it, especially given his halitosis.
She had fourteen green tags out on the floors now. She had counted them in the book on Friday before she left for the night and was glad a monitor had come in around three in the afternoon because she didn’t want to go home on the number thirteen.
Dolores worked every fourth Saturday, which was ok with her because the drive was only forty minutes instead of the usual hour, she didn’t have to go to any meetings, and nobody came down to the shop to talk about the budget. She got to spend the day down here fixing bent pole clamps and monitors with dead batteries.
At nine-fifteen Cynthia from the ICU brought down a bedside monitor on a cart. It was an Ellery, the big one with the arm mount. Cynthia had unhooked it from the arm and left the arm in the room.
“It wouldn’t take the thing,” Cynthia said. “The update. It said to call service.”
“Did it say that or something else?”
Cynthia pursed her lips and thought about it. “It said fail. And a number.”
Dolores plugged the Ellery into the bench and pushed the update from the laptop. It started fine. The progress bar went to about a third and stopped. The screen went gray and said PACKAGE INTEGRITY: FAIL (0x04).
She looked at the clock on the wall. A minute and forty seconds.
She tried it once more. A minute and forty seconds. PACKAGE INTEGRITY: FAIL (0x04).
“Is it broken?” Cynthia asked.
“No. It works. It just won’t take the new software.”
“Can I have it back, then?”
“Give me five minutes.”
She ran it through the rest of the check anyway, because she didn’t like handing back something she hadn’t looked at. Alarms. Leads. The battery. It was a good monitor.
She wrote a green tag and hung it on the handle and Cynthia wheeled it out.
Then she called Ellery.
The Ellery hold music was some piano thing that was better than Corbin’s. After six minutes a recording told her that due to unusually high call volume, wait times were longer than normal, and asked if she would like a callback instead. She pressed one and said her name and the hospital and her extension into the phone.
She hung up and got the book down and wrote the info about the Ellery into it.
Andre from respiratory called at ten-forty. He was up on 5 with one of the Halstead vents.
“It’s ventilating fine,” he said. “I’m not bringing it down. There’s a guy on it.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because the update failed, and your board says to call you.”
“It’s not my board.”
“It has your name on it.”
She hadn’t seen that. She got up and looked. At the bottom, under the crossed-out smiley face, in smaller letters, Kevin had written Questions → Dolores x4471.
“What did it say?” she asked.
“UPDATE FAILED. E-212. CONTACT SERVICE,” Andre read. “It’s blue. Theirs are always blue.”
“How long did it run first?”
“I don’t know. A minute and a half?”
“Not a minute forty.”
“I wasn’t timing it, Dolores.”
“Tag it,” she said. “I’ll come look at it when he’s off it.”
“He’s not coming off it today.”
“Then call me when he’s off it.”
She called Halstead. The voicemail box for technical service was full.
She wrote the information about the vent in the book and drew a line under it.
She called Joe.
He picked up on the fifth ring. She heard a sharp whistle and crowd noise.
“Dolores. Everything okay?”
“I’m fine. You at soccer?”
“Cranberry. It’s the tournament. They’re tied in the second half.” He was walking, she could hear it. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a monitor and a vent this morning, same as the pumps. Won’t take the update.”
“Did you follow the board?”
“I followed the board. Joe, it’s three companies now.”
“So?”
“This isn’t normal.”
There was a roar behind him and she waited for it to be over.
“Sorry. Say that again.”
“It isn’t normal. I’ve been down here twenty-two years. The pumps, fine, Corbin screws up an update, it happens. But Ellery and Halstead don’t share anything with Corbin. They don’t even like each other. The same thing is happening to all three.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not the machines.”
“Is anybody hurt?”
“No.”
“Are the devices running?”
“They’re running.”
“Then we’re okay for now. I told Kevin to put a procedure in place. Put it in the system and I’ll look at it Monday and see if we need to call somebody.”
“Who would we call?”
“I don’t know. Monday.” Somebody near him yelled at a referee. “Thanks, Dolores. Seriously. Good catch.”
He hung up.
She put the phone down. She was annoyed at Joe, and then at herself for calling him at a soccer game on a Saturday.
She logged into the asset system. It took three tries because it made you change your password every sixty days and she had changed it on Wednesday and already forgotten what she had changed it to. She smiled as she reset her password to JO3SAD!CK.
She entered the monitor. She entered the vent. None of the choices on the dropdown for the problem were correct so she chose OTHER. She typed Update fail, see board into the text field and saved it. The screen said the record had been saved. She wasn’t confident about this.
She got the book back down off the shelf and under the line she wrote the date and time followed by:
Told J. by phone — 3 vendors, same fail, not normal. Said follow board, enter in system, look Monday.
At eleven-thirty the overhead sounded. Rapid response, 4 West, room 412. Rapid response, 4 West, room 412.
Terri’s floor.
Dolores stopped with her hand on the rack and listened. It repeated twice and went quiet. She looked at the phone on the bench. If it was a pump or a monitor, somebody would call down eventually, usually within ten minutes, usually angry.
She got the book down and ran her finger back up the week. Two of the green tags were on 4 West. One of them was Terri’s pump, the one she was used to. She didn’t know which room it was in.
She thought about calling up there but didn’t. Nobody on 4 West had time to answer a phone about a pump right now.
She gave it fifteen minutes. The phone didn’t ring. Ellery hadn’t called back either.
She went back to the rack. There was a pump on it from 6 with the door latch taped shut with medical tape. She grimaced, as she’d asked people not to do this in email, on a sign, and in person. It was time to create stickers to put on all the pumps that said what not to do.
She took the tape off and the latch fell out into her hand in two pieces.
At one-ten her cell phone buzzed on the bench. It was Joe.
Won in PKs!!
She sent him a thumbs-up.