Masked

When telephone hoax or telemarketing are everywhere, any incoming call without the caller's number displayed can be enough to push us over the edge. It's no different even if the caller is a doctor (who won't sell low credit card interest or mortgage plan).

That's a big problem when a hospital masks all the outgoing telephone call numbers. Hospitals aren't supposed to appear like a terrorist wearing mask, of course, unless that hospital turns out to behave like Osama bin Laden - and mine has. In the broad sense, this means all the telephone calls from my hospital are masked without call number displayed. Believe me, that is annoying when a patient didn't answer the phone call from a doctor who needed to talk about a dangerously high potassium blood level.

Slushy nonsense? Not a bit of it! Masking the outgoing phone call numbers is said to protect the privacy of the hospital. Privacy. It's a big word that seems grand. I could hardly believe it, yet I knew I had to.

If you'll let me, I'd like to mask myself and say it secretly, the brain behind that concept of masked outgoing call number is clogged and sclerotic with hierarchy.