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One recent night, the clinic was staffed by Dr. Steven Strauss, edgy and white-haired, who said that his bosses had proposed the new title of “walkinist,” to go with his old one, internist.Dr. Strauss said his past had helped prepare him for the rigors of nighttime work: He had dabbled in est and Scientology, and, in his early 20s, worked at a Safeway in Washington. He said his boss at Safeway used to berate him for being slower than the middle-aged checker working next to him; he quit, went to medical school, and hung his Safeway checker’s diploma in his bathroom to remind him of what might have been.
So far, Dr. Strauss said, there has been a run of urinary tract infections, chest pain, abdominal pain, internal bleeding and genital herpes. “That’s pretty challenging, to tell someone at 2 in the morning for the first time that they’ve got genital herpes,” Dr. Strauss confessed.
