Some time ago, I got called up for jury duty. As I traversed the few blocks between the parking garage and the Judicial Building downtown, I came upon a group of people gathered around an elderly woman. She had fallen and her head was bleeding profusely. Nobody had a cell phone (back then, they weren’t as prevalent), so I went into the nearest building, borrowed a phone and called an ambulance. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later and paramedics assured us all that the wound was superficial. She was going to be just fine but they would take her to the nearest hospital just to be sure. They packed her into the ambulance and whisked her off.
I didn’t know at the time (still don’t) how ambulances worked. Would she have to pay for that? Then there was the trip to the emergency room… I had just gotten my first full-time job and would be getting my first health insurance plan ever. Prior to that, I had been going without because it was just too expensive. A trip to the gynecologist or the dentist had been something I had to save up for or put onto my credit card. So I began to wonder if my good deed had just plunged that poor woman into debt. My over-active imagination perked up and, before I knew it, Code Blue evolved.
Code Blue was first performed live as a sketch with the all female sketch comedy troupe Tomboys in Fishnets. It is the nightmare of health insurance. Its outrageous scenario portrays the feelings of emasculation and helplessness associated with losing the ability to provide basic healthcare for oneself. And of course, the choice to go without healthcare as an adult is difficult enough. When you have a child depending on you, it becomes quite another nightmare altogether.
After producing and directing news and documentary pieces for the last seven years, this is the first fictional piece I have ever directed. It is my sincere hope that this piece makes you chuckle a bit and think a lot. There is a healthcare pandemic in this country and, as the saying goes; it’s up to us to find a cure.
Jennifer Still,
Writer / Director