Satire

English 351

Dr. Herman Asarnow

Neil Kirk

The Supreme Accident Investigative Force (SAIF), the police agency that oversees the worker’s compensation insurance program has been a blessing for John Bone. He had his arm ripped out of its socket by some machinery at the sawmill, his place of employment in 1995. With his pocket knife, he cut the remaining one-inch of skin and muscle tissue. Leaving the oozing red mass behind him, the foreman Dick Cheet-A-Little guided him to the ambulance that took him to Willamette Falls Hospital.

In the ambulance the medic ….. a green moldy ham sandwich, takes his temperature and begins asking him questions. Bones groaned. The ambulance turns a corner and wine bottles floor smashing into the wall. The medic, between sips of red Ripple wine, says he needs a medical history. Where were you born? Your parents name? How long have you been working for the mill? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you have a history of mental illness? “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Bone yells.

After his recovery, Bones is given worker’s compensation benefits for his injuries. His neighbor Frank Sids, who has a face, nose, and stiff hair like a wild boar, exclaims thank God for the monthly pension payments.

Unfortunately not all workers benefit from the insurance program established for injured workers. SAIF’s goal is to deny all claims in order to increase profits.

I am greatly troubled. I would not write; but, I must. Workers are being gravely misrepresented. It is my duty as a citizen. Like my father before me, I must dedicate my life to those who are less fortunate. Even though I lack skills to write formally and professionally, I will attempt to express a few thoughts.

Unlike Mr. Bones, some victims show no outward signs. Their injuries are internal – caused by toxic waste sites and chemical exposure that effects the lungs, kidneys, liver and the BRAIN. Yes the BRAIN! Then the elite of the society says look production workers are all stupid. Of course they are stupid. Their brains have been rotted out by “techtaclicene, metphicene, claciphene, metabiphine and mega mega chiphene.”

Case Study: Max Reed

By Psychologist Curtis Kirkpatrick

Max Reed, a welder, was wearing faded jeans with holes burnt through not just his pants but light appeared through his leg. A piece of iron had burnt clear through his leg the day before. The world seemed to be collapsing around him. He saw one man leaning forward vomiting some purple slime that dripped from his lips and oozed from his nose. It looked like raspberry milkshake that had been combined with slug slime. Dogs scurry to eat the purple slime, lapping it up in seconds. Broken glass, cardboard, and bird shit covered the surroundings. Across a pile of rusted twisted angle irons, lay a tattered Levi coat, like the one Arnold Witzcaugh had worn. An Eagle was pulling something from the middle of the coat. The thing stretched out like spaghetti as the Eaggle attempted to fly. The spaghetti looking stuff kept getting longer. Reed walked a little closer. He saw a hand sticking out from the coat. Witzcaugh’s wedding band was on his finger. Reed recalled the former safety man Frank Clut, saying he was going to get caught for filing a worker’s compensation claim. No one is going to raise my fucking insurance rates Clout had said. Reed looked closer. The face was not recognizable only a scrap of meat remained on the tip of the chin.

Reed begins to feel dizzy. Not from the sight of Witzcaugh but from the heavy metal laced paint fumes he was breathing. Beheath his eyes, dark bags sagged. His cheeks were puffed out like an ever-inflated balloon. His face turned from a brownish tone to white. Other welders continued working. Flesh droops from their cheeks. Pot bellies stick out. Faces are swollen from the breathing of zinc, lead, and epoxy fumes.

Reed falls on the steel. A voice cries out. “Are you alright.” Reed nearly unconscious begins to recall Sam Klum a fellow welder, telling him how zinc and epoxy coated steel would really fuck-up your lungs. Klum, while his cotton clothes he had purchased at the Mart Fall Apart Store were leaping in flames, had told Reed just the week before that two workers at Snitzer Steel spent a week in an Oxygen tent at Emanual Hospital.

“Snitzer fired them boys because they were unable to get to work,” Klum said. “The God Damn son of Bitches were in an oxygen tent. What the fuck the company think they were going to do run straight from the hospital to work?”

It was nothing personal just a business decision, personnel director Plum Krum told the family.

Reed’s lung capacity increased to 50 percent. Two hours later, he managed to walk to his car that was parked one-hundred-yards away. He drove home in his Merc with its smoking 460 engine. The exhaust was leaking. Mice were running out from underneath the car seat, eating crumbs left over from lunch. Lice and crabs were feasting on his eye brows and the hairs around his crotch. Reed lunged forward grabbing his chest as a flaming sensation leapt from his lungs. His balls began to swell up so damn big that he had to spread his legs.

The next day he met with the safety man. The safety man was new, and his name was Harry Blunt. Blunt said, “It’s in your head. One exposure to zinc and epoxy fumes couldn’t possibly cause respiratory problems. You have asthma.”

Reed thinks that if he files a worker’s compensation claim the safety man will fire him. He has heard that the man who was vomiting had been fired after he began coughing blood. The decision to fire him was nothing personal – it was just a business decision. Reed also knew that if he stayed he could die from respiratory arrest. His choice was to die from chemical exposure or lose his job and slowly die of starvation. Harry Blunt held the cards, and Reed knew it. But Reed filed a claim anyway. It was the principle he told himself. I must file before my mind rots-out and I can no longer read – let alone think.

Blunt made an appointment for Reed to see doctor KaRupt