Giant Dwarf vs. The Good, The Bad and The......Aaaaahhh

It's been a shit week. Really. I understand that this is my job, but there are some days when you can't pay me enough to deal with these people. Those are invariably the days I stay late, which comes with no additional compensation (I'm salaried...the great social worker trap). Here's a sampling of my world:

People with no money who expect me to find them a room at the Ritz....and pay for it.

Police officers who are unable to follow simple directions.

Drug addicts who squander every treatment option available to them until all of those opportunities are gone and then expect me to find them a room at the Ritz....and pay for it.

Teenaged girls who think that their parents' lifestyle is incompatible with theirs because the parents don't supply them with crystal meth.

Teenaged boys who think their high school is an open bar.

Parents who think it's okay to take massive doses of painkillers while tending to their children.

And I get to deal with all of these things with a barely usable iPhone issued to me by my department. I spend half my day saying "can you hear me now?" and it's NOT FUNNY. (However, what may be funny to some of my co-workers is watching me frantically tapping on this tiny appliance to get the damned thing to work.)

So, after three days of constant, non-stop human misery and soul-sucking, another one of my very entitled patients came in today: she was placed in a facility yesterday, decided she didn't like it, so returned to the emergency room so I can find her a place at the Ritz....and pay for it. When my boss called me to tell me that she was my next patient (it's a bad case when my boss is involved), I heard her name and almost had a panic attack (I've known this patient the entire time I've worked in the ER). I had already yelled at the idiot cops who came in and couldn't wait 5 seconds for me to find a patient for them. And I already read the riot act to yet another addict. But this woman was going to put me over the edge. After four hours of making calls and negotiating with her, I finally put her ass in a cab and walked back to my office, directly to my desk phone and frantically searched for the telephone number of the massage place.

Which brings me to the "aaaaahh." Massages may seem like a luxury, but lemme tell ya: this one was treatment. By the time I got to the massage room, I was talking a mile a minute and completely lost my ability to self-soothe. I was so utterly stressed that I could barely tolerate even a small human foible and realized that I came into work today actually seething. My new hero, Zvi, listened patiently while I enumerated my multiple injuries, both physical and emotional, and essentially turned myself into a needy patient.

And then he laid hands on me.

In the best possible meaning of that term.

There were parts of my body I didn't even realize were affected. It almost didn't matter if he actually loosened a knot; this guy's presence was in itself healing and he transferred some really good energy to me. Basically, for an hour (and a fee), I got to slow myself down (my breathing and my thoughts) and let someone take care of me for once without having to give anything in return (okay, yes, the fee, but a very small price to preserve my sanity).

So, if I believed in drinking alone, I'd raise an actual glass of wine in a toast: To my patients, who give me perspective, and to Zvi, for smoothing that perspective out.