Details, Details

NOTE: Events have been hyperbolized for effect.

Me: “Good morning!”
Them: “Hi. I’m looking for a patient?”
Me: [Attempts to ask the patient’s name.]
Them: [Without stopping] “They came in like two days ago, through the emergency room? They thought they just had a head wound, but it turns out they have a renoberation of the doohickey, and the injury got all infected and stuff so they had to amputate the head and they say...”
Me: [Tuning them out.]
Them: “...that they’re gonna be fine, but what they really wanted to look out for was the cottonmouth and the hairy nipples, which is a weird development for the particular gender of the patient, a tidbit of information which I’m not going to reveal at this point in the conversation...”
Me: [Thinking about something else.]
Them: “...and anyway, they had like three MRIs done at the same time: one of the jaw, one of the left big toe, and one of the neighbor’s dog because apparently that was like an inciting factor in the whole thing, and because of that I’m told the patient has the dog as a roommate, and the room’s supposed to be on either the second floor, the fifth floor, or the third and fourth simultaneously...”
Me: [Mentally orbiting Neptune.]
Them: “...so it’s one of them, and I’m not sure what floor you keep that kind of patient or whatever. Is there like a hairy nipple floor? An entire floor where you keep people with hairy nipples? Anyway, I’m looking for this patient.”
Me: “You done?”
Them: “I guess. Why?”
Me: “The massive amounts of information you’ve given me offers absolutely no indication of where the patient might be. You know what you could lead with that is the easiest possible unit of information? The sound bite that could maximize my usefulness to you, and minimize the length of this already egregiously long conversation?”
Them: “What’s that?”
Me: “The patient’s goddamn name.”
Them: “Oh. I don’t know it.”
Me: [Violently murders the visitor.]
Them: [In the throes of death.] “I think the first name starts with a consonant... does that help?”