Huh..Huh..Hemoglobin (remember to pronounce that "H"!)

Just because I have absolutely nothing to do with my time, I picked up another job. I didn't want to, actually. I did everything I could to avoid it. I told them that the two hours round-trip to Tours was too far to drive for just an hour and a half of work. They called me back and said they would work around my university schedule, on days that I will already be in town. I gave them a ridiculous time - 6:30p.m. - after my Tuesday classes were over, thinking they would surely turn it down. They said "OK".

So now, twice a month, I park in the parking lot of a big hospital, go up the elevator to the third floor, walk down a sterile hallway and into a brightly-lit conference room, and sit down at a large oval table to face eight surgeons wearing white hospital jackets who are waiting. For me. 

Can I say that again? Eight surgeons waiting for me. Me! When is the last time you made a doctor wait for you? I'm guessing never. You're the one who waits for the doctor. Especially in France, where I choose my doctor by the quality of their waiting room magazines, knowing that I am going to spend a lot of quality time perusing them while I wait for my schedule-challenged M.D. 

So here I am sitting in front of my group of doctors. The woman organizing the meeting says, "Who wants to go first?" and a shy-looking intern pulls out a paper on B-cells and begins reading. And every few seconds I interrupt him to correct his English. "The stoody concerns the..." "Stuh-dy," I correct... "Sorry, study," he says, and continues, "the influence of fixation on the morphology of the epiderme in the...", "Epidermis", I correct. 

This is my new job.  Interrupting doctors to tell them that they're wrong. And then listening to them thank me for it. I spend half of the session marveling about how the tables have been turned and the other half desperately trying to understand what they're saying - whether the word they spoke is a body part that I've never heard of, or just a regular word that's been egregiously mispronounced. For an hour and a half they read papers in English, their colleagues ask them questions in English, and I correct everyone whenever I hear something wrong.

Now for those of you who are reading this in the States, you might not find this terribly shocking. That's because American doctors are, under their doctor outfits and nametags, often actual human beings who have warm blood running through their veins. They smile occasionally. They ask if you have questions, listen to your questions, and then answer them in a pleasant manner and with vocabulary you will understand. Unlike their French counterparts.

French doctors have reptile blood and, though they might appear human, are actually cyborgs who have been programmed to think that they are demi-gods. They don't smile. They don't like questions. I've never figured out why, but guess it is either 1. because they think you are questioning their infallible authority or 2. they are afraid they won't know the answer and thus reveal that they are not in fact omniscient and therefore risk their divinity for the stupid American who is asking how many Echinacea drops she should give her children daily, when they've actually never heard of Echinacea.*

But now it is I, Amy, who has to really concentrate when someone says "dix-sept heures" to figure out if they mean five o'clock or seven o'clock...I, Amy, who was running late for the doctors and couldn't find anything to write on so ended up taking notes in my recipe notebook...I, Amy, who pulled a tampon out of my purse when I was fishing for a pen...I, Amy...me!!!...who is sitting here telling an intelligent, and probably extremely talented, French doctor that it isn't "these case" it's "these cases", remember to pronounce the "s" at the end of your words.

Who would have guessed? And they're paying me to sit there and be the scolding schoolteacher! Which is why, when I finish and walk out into the enormous hospital parking lot, I have to hold my hand over my mouth so that no one sees me giggling the whole way to my car.

*This particular doctor was in Restigne, mind you,

where they still bleed people when they have a toothache.

I'm kidding. Kind of.