Your daily dose of snark.

Secret Speakeasy Stumps C-suite

Hospital Woeisme administrators have been scouring the facility recently, attempting to locate a secret resident-run speakeasy. Rumors first spread about the hidden bar when a disgruntled resident, who apparently hadn’t been given an invitation, reported it to his attending. The speakeasy is believed to have music, games, and drinking, though no one is entirely sure as it is so mysterious.

As an investigative undercover reporter, securing an invitation to the speakeasy took months of convincing the residents. This included signing a non-disclosure agreement, participating in a blood oath, and taking a pinkie-swear, all affirming that the location would not be shared.

On the day of the visit to the underground bar, a resident explained, “We’re super picky about who we let in, because, you know, a speakeasy is like, by definition, totally illegal. And this is a real one, not one of those trendy ones you see in big cities.” Walking towards a bank of elevators away from the main hospital entrance, the residents took the lift to the basement. They followed signs to the morgue and, after looking around and seeing no one else in the hall, slipped inside.

A towering athletic male in scrubs, his name badge identifying him as ‘Dr. Bones – Ortho Resident,’ stepped forward. He demanded to know what we were doing there. Under normal circumstances one might query what business an orthopod had in the chilly morgue, but these circumstances were in no way normal. One of the residents spoke the password: “I'm a member of the resident wellness committee.”

The ripped resident-turned-bouncer stood aside. Walking past him, the residents hunched down and one at a time climbed into a specific morgue cabinet in the lower right corner of the room, closing the door behind them as they went. The bouncer looked over and gave an encouraging nod and smile. On entering the creepy coffin-sized tunnel and closing the door behind, pitch black and silence enveloped all. Rapidly crawling forward and pushing on the back wall as instructed, it gave way with a slight creek. Bright lights, loud music, and the sounds of laughter suddenly filled the air.

Climbing through and standing, the fabled speakeasy came into view. The large room turned out to be a long forgotten embalming room, no longer needed once the hospital had updated to using refrigeration for its bodies. Some residents had stolen plans to the hospital to help identify a bar locale, and spotted this large and concealed room on the map.

In one corner, members from the resident band were jamming, while at the other end of the room a group played darts. Residents from nearly every specialty, some in plain clothes and some in scrubs, were present. Most residents were chilling at the scattered tables, though one group appeared intensely focused on a spreadsheet, discussing bets and odds of some upcoming event. A makeshift bar near the door handed out drinks. Instead of asking one’s age, the bartender queried, “Is your shift over?” before handing over beer and bathtub gin cocktails from the travel-size cooler.

Random posters adorned the walls, along with the annual medical school student calendar, and sign-up sheets for residents to volunteer as bouncers, band members, or bartenders. A stack of Bingo cards sat on a nearby table, next to a bright red landline phone.

One resident toasted, “To the best bar in the world!” and all the residents clinked beers and drank. The orthopod who’d been standing watch entered, too. After a game of darts, the residents relaxed at one of the tables for a bit. While chatting, the red phone began ringing. Silence fell. No one moved. A nearby resident picked it up, and after a moment yelled to the room, “We’ve been compromised! Abandon ship!”

A coordinated mass exodus took place, with the bar and everything else hastily packed as residents swarmed out through the morgue cabinet. On exiting, the pathology resident Dr. Toolatté, whose shift had apparently started and clearly unaware of the speakeasy in her backyard, could be heard screaming as she ran out, “The zombie apocalypse is starting!”

By the time the administrators arrived to raid the site, they only found an empty room, the floor littered with a couple of old bingo cards and bottle caps.

In the following weeks, word spread that some medical student had been the snitch. The student, hoping to match at Hospital Woeisme for residency and trying to impress his attendings, had tracked the residents to the morgue and figured out the locale. In response, the residents blackballed the medical student at the recent rank list meeting.

The residents deny that a new speakeasy is in the works. However, during a recent interview with them for another article, the hospital blueprints could be seen laid out in a corner of the room. On closer inspection, several random locations were circled, each seemed to be in a distant or hard-to-reach area of the hospital.

Perhaps the C-suite shouldn’t be so sure that the days of bootlegging beer and bathtub gin at Hospital Woeisme are over…

Want more tales from Hospital Woeisme? Check out these articles!

Featured