As a hotel doctor, I’m on duty 24 hours a day. This
sounds oppressive until you realize that even a busy week – say twenty visits –
requires about thirty hours of actual work. A downside is that calls can arrive
at precisely the wrong time.
This one came one hour and twenty minutes before a
dinner reservation with friends.
I calculated furiously and decided I could make it. My
destination, the Mondrian, was on the Sunset Strip, six miles away. It was
Sunday, so traffic was tolerable, but street parking on the Strip is difficult.
The Mondrian is not one of my regulars, so parking attendants would probably
not accommodate me. The hotel possesses only a skimpy open space around the
entrance, so the valet might drive my car deep into the garage where it might
take ten minutes to retrieve. Worse, there was a chance they would charge.
Making a snap decision, I drove past, but no street
parking materialized. I turned down a side street but no luck, so I returned to
the hotel, handed over my keys, and announced (incorrectly) that I was the
hotel’s doctor.
I arrived at the room and introduced myself only to
hear the discouraging words: “Spik Spanish?”…
I shook my head regretfully and proceeded
in English. This usually works because most Latin American males speak enough
English to get along (women don’t do so well). Sadly, he proceeded to perform
the Zero-English pantomime: pointing to his throat, pointing to his head,
making coughing noises.
No problem. Peering outside the door, I appealed to a group of
maids on their cleaning rounds, but they were recent arrivals and spoke no
English. Luckily, a bellman pushing a food cart was bilingual.
Delivering medical care was, as always, the easiest
part. To my delight, the valets had held my car, and I arrived at the
restaurant not excessively late.
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