Fred

The receptionist at the chiropractic clinic poked her head into my treatment room in the middle of a massage I had with a new neck-injury patient.

"Who's that...?" she whispered inaudibly and pointed to my patient who couldn't see her since he was face-down on the table. "Fred..." I whispered back, also inaudibly. She nodded and closed the door.

A couple of minutes later she came back into the room, "That's Fred...?" she whispered, with poor Fred still not knowing what the hell we were discussing. "YES" I hissed back. "Ok," she said and disappeared. How annoying, I thought, it's on the schedule, his file is right there, why can't she just look at that?

A minute later she comes back again, now motioning with her hand horizontally in front of her neck, as if chopping her own head off. I said "excuse me one moment" to Fred and stepped outside into the hallway to figure out what was up. She blurted out "Fred just arrived, he was running late, who the hell is in there??"

That's when I realized I had been massaging the wrong Fred.

We hustled the wrong Fred into a waiting room for the physician and then brought the right Fred into my space and told him not to worry about that he was late, we will always have time for him.