Fima washed his hands and made a cup of coffee for the patient in the recovery room. Then he made another cup for Tamar and one for himself, donned a short white coat, sat down behind his counter, and began to look through the ledger in which he kept track of patients’ visits. Here too he wrote the numbers out in words, not figures. He noted down accounts that were settled or deferred, dates for laboratory tests and their results, and any alterations to appointments. He also managed the file cabinet that contained patients’ medical records and details of prescriptions, ultrasound tests, and x-rays. This, with answering the telephone, was the sum total of his job. Apart from making coffee every couple of hours for the two doctors and the nurse, and occasionally also for a patient if her treatment had been painful.