Predictably, the trip up to Pineview and back took longer than the four hours John had expected. It wasn’t helped out by a traffic jam near Orlando that left him sitting in the car, mostly fuming and wishing he’d brought a book. When the traffic finally got moving again, he discovered the jam had been caused by a truck accident that had left oranges scattered all over the freeway. It had been a hell of a mess and they were still cleaning up orange juice. John couldn’t tell if anyone had been hurt, but there were a couple ambulances sitting around, the EMTs not looking very busy, so that was good.

Like most EMTs, John was good at picking stuff up after it happened, but almost universally EMTs would prefer it hadn’t happened at all. In his perfect world, EMTs would get paid for sitting around ready rooms and never having to go out and put their skills to use, never having to use a defib or advanced life support monitor. But, the world was hardly perfect, and it didn’t seem as if it were likely to be anytime soon.

The traffic jam added a good hour to his trip, and there hadn’t been much he could do but sit in the Toyota, listen to the radio, and wait it out impatiently. The radio was no great solace; all there was to be heard was country music, really obnoxious rock, oldies John had been tired of years before, and oceans of babble about the situation in the Gulf. It was clear that the hammer was going to get dropped on Iraq any day now, and John had seen it coming long before – it was part of the reason that EMTs were hard to find right now. Many of them were in National Guard or Reserve units, and sitting over in some sandbox waiting for the bullets to start flying. John had still been in college the first time a Bush went nuts over in the Gulf, and he knew he was going to be just as glad to be in Florida for this one.

But the trip wasn’t totally a waste of time. The guys at Pineview had been glad to see him pull in with the loaner B-343. Their other unit, a Sollarian, had been acting up and they didn’t really want to depend on it any more than they had to. Voss had been willing to send the unit in for repairs, but they didn’t have a loaner policy, so that would have left the service without any ALS monitors at all. The chief of the ambulance department said there was money planned in next year’s budget for a replacement, and given John’s quick service with the loaner, he figured that was points on the board for getting the sale when the department had some money to spend. While it was still a ways off, it looked like his service policy had just made another sale.

Someday, John thought, Voss was likely to wake up and smell the coffee, and John realized that when that happened he’d have to already be another step in front of them. What that was, he didn’t know yet, but there had to be something. He just had to think of it.

Thus, it was nearly noon when John had the nose of the Toyota pointed back toward Sarasota beyond the accident site; he couldn’t expect to be back much before two. He spent most of the trip trying to figure out a way to steal a march on the competition without any great success. It was only around Lakeland that the issue of Sally and Teresa crossed his mind again. He’d told Sally he’d hoped to be back by noon, and of course he’d missed that. It probably wouldn’t do to leave her hanging too long; he figured he ought to at least take a swing by the hospital and touch base with her. Maybe he could steal enough time to take her to get her stuff out of her car.

But that carried with it the problem that it would do a good job of shooting the rest of the day in the ass. While the delivery of the loaner unit had been important, there were undoubtedly other things sitting on his desk that needed attention besides the Tomtucknee Regional bid. Well, there was no choice but to go help Sally rescue her things; he knew the police impound yard worked banker’s hours, and if he didn’t get it done soon it would be another day before anything could be done. Maybe, he thought, he could take Sally back to the hospital, leave her there until visiting hours ended, while he went back to the shop and tried to play catch-up.

He was south of Tampa before he realized that he didn’t have any idea of how much stuff she had. Probably not much, he thought, but almost certainly more than he could fit into the trunk of the Toyota, which was partly filled with brochures and demo units, anyway. On thinking about it, he thought he might as well take a swing by the shop, pick up the van they occasionally used for deliveries and hauling, and use it instead. That would at least give him the chance to touch base with Annamaria, to see if there was anything else around Suncoast that needed his immediate attention.

It was pushing two when he slid into his parking space at Suncoast. “That took you longer than I expected,” Annamaria said when he walked into the office. “Did you stop for lunch someplace?”

“I never even thought about lunch,” John said, only realizing now that he ought to have had something to eat. He explained about the truck accident, and said, “Look, I’ve got a couple errands to run with the van. I probably won’t be back till quitting time, but I’ll come in this evening to try and catch up on stuff. Has anything come up that really needs my attention?”

“A couple things,” his Cuban secretary and general keeper of the Suncoast flame replied. “Tom had an issue up in Savannah that he needs a reading on from you, and he needs it three hours ago, and that proof on the mailing for the new home defib just showed up; they need approval on it before they can print it.”

“Crap,” he snorted. “They’re a week late on getting us the proof and now they need approval yesterday.”

“It has to be approved quickly so they can work it into their printing schedule,” she replied. “Otherwise it’s going to be another week or ten days.”

“The next time we have to do a mailing, remind me to shop around and see if we can find a printer that really wants the work,” he snorted. “Look the proof over, point out any changes you see, then leave it on my desk. I’ll look it over this evening.”

“I can do that,” she nodded, “but you better call Tom right away.”

“All right, I’ll head back to my office and give him a buzz,” he replied. He headed back to his little office – he didn’t feel the need to have a big, elaborate one – and picked up the phone. While it rang, he noticed two or three other things Annamaria had left on his desk needing attention.

It didn’t take long to get Tom on the phone, but when he announced who he was, Tom said, “John, I’ll call you right back, I’m right in the middle of something and may have this ironed out.”

“Hey, babe, I can’t hang around long,” John told him.

“I’ll get right back with you,” Tom promised. There was a click as the phone hung up.

Well, shit, John thought. It better not be too damn long, but as long as I’m here I might as well deal with some of this shit. He turned to the paperwork on his desk, some of it important, some that was less of a crisis.

Time passed slowly as he waited for Tom to call back. John knew he had to be getting moving, and he got more fidgety as time passed. Finally, forty-five minutes later Tom called back. “Got it worked out,” he reported. “Turns out I didn’t need a reading from you after all. Nice big sale, too.”

“Good,” John said, realizing that he’d lost most of another hour to no good purpose, although he’d gotten some less-than-critical paperwork done none too efficiently while he waited. “Shoot me an e-mail with the details, or tell Annamaria. I have to be getting out of here.”

Within a minute he was heading out of the office. “See you tomorrow, Annamaria,” he said. “I’ve had a few things happening but I haven’t got the time to explain them right now.” Before she could drop another bomb on him, he was out the door, climbing into the Suncoast van.

On the way over to the hospital he realized he was getting really hungry. Easily solved; he whipped the van into a Krystal Burger that didn’t seem busy. Even that didn’t go quickly; the girl on the drive-up window microphone spoke with a West Indian accent and couldn’t seem to understand the concept of “hold the onions.” It seemed to take forever to get his food, and as soon as he was back out on the street, opening the wrapper, he found it reeking and piled high with onion, naturally.

But hell, he was hungry, so he ate it anyway, knowing his burps were going to be tasting of the lousy things for hours. One damn thing after another . . . that was the way things seemed to be going today.

Finally he made it to the hospital. He got an elevator up to the floor where he knew Teresa was, but when he got to her room she was asleep and there was no sign of Sally. The shift nurse knew she’d been hanging around all day, but had said she’d gone down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Something else that didn’t work out right.

It was close to three-thirty when Sally showed back up from wherever she’d been. “We’re going to have to get moving if we’re going to rescue your stuff today,” John told her.

“I guess,” Sally said. “Maybe we’d better make it quick, though. I think Teresa will be waking up soon.”

“Fine with me,” John told her. “Not much has gone right today and everything seems to take longer than it should. How’s Teresa doing?”

“Fairly well, according to the doctor,” Sally told him. “She’s got her act together a lot better than she had when you saw her this morning. She remembers the accident but doesn’t seem to quite understand the pain she was in.”

“It often happens that way,” John said in an attempt to be soothing. “You can go through real damn agony, and after you’ve had a little time to get over it, it doesn’t seem as bad as it actually was. I mean, hell, you should know. I can think of a lot of mothers who went through hell having their kids, and after they recover they remember it as an enjoyable experience.”

“It wasn’t that way with me,” Sally shook her head. “I agree about the going-through-hell part, and I wouldn’t trade Teresa for anything, but I’m not anxious to do it again without anesthesia. If it ever has to happen again I want to be knocked all the way on my ass. Of course, it might have been better if Teresa hadn’t been delivered by a Mexican midwife without any kind of anesthetic at all.”

“Not in a hospital?” John asked, afraid he knew the answer.

“Hell no, I couldn’t afford it,” Sally snorted. “I was on the run from my husband and my parents big time, and I was trying to lay low. At least there was a woman in the same place who had been a midwife in Mexico, so I got through it all right, but there’s no way in hell I’d want to risk doing it that way again.”

“For sure,” John said, thinking that her husband and parents had to be real bastards. She hadn’t said much about them, but from what little he’d heard, that was the way the wind seemed to be blowing. Sometime he wanted to hear a little more about it, but not now. “I’ve had to deliver precipitating babies a couple times, but they’ve always been in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, and the hospital got to deal with the details.”

“And charge for the delivery, no doubt,” she giggled.

“No doubt,” he shook his head. “That’s the way it works. Seems to me they could have at least given the EMT a cut on the profits. I could have used the money back then.”

It was pushing four when they finally got to the police impound yard; at one time he’d hoped to be there around noon. The guy on duty at the yard – not a cop – could see the clock ticking down and was looking forward to knocking off for the day, so he wasn’t very helpful when John told him they’d come to retrieve stuff from Sally’s car. “Can’t let you do it,” he said. “The tow company hasn’t released it yet.”

“What do you mean?” John said.

“They had to tow it in here,” the guy explained curtly, not wanting to have another hassle this late in the day. “They want their money before they’ll release the car. I can’t let you in it until I have a release from them.”

“Hey,” John said, trying to be civil. “We just want to get some clothes and stuff out of the car.”

“Can’t let you do it,” the guy said. “Them are the rules. I mean, what’s to keep you from getting the stuff from the car and then just walking off and leaving it? We have to have a release from the towing company, and we have to have something worked out on the disposition of the car.”

“Well, shit,” John said. Rules were rules, bureaucracy was bureaucracy, and this guy was only doing his job, after all. It was clear that blowing up at him wasn’t going to clear the way any, and might just make things worse. “I don’t suppose I can call them up and give them a credit card number.”

“Might be you could,” the guy said, “but we still have to have the release form signed by them.”

“Could they fax it over?”

“Probably so, but we don’t have a fax machine here. Anytime we get a release by fax, it goes to headquarters and it always seems to take a couple days to get it over here.”

“Well, shit,” John said again. “What towing company is it we have to settle up with?”

“Greenleaf,” the guy told him, and gave him the address.

“I know the place,” John said. It had to be a good half hour away, especially considering the traffic this time of day. “I have to pass it on the way to work. Any chance you could stick around a little late?”

“Can’t do it,” the guy said. “Not only is it against the rules, my kid has a soccer game tonight and my wife would give me hell if I missed it.”

“Well, Sally,” John said, “I guess we’re screwed for today. I guess about all we can do is settle up with the towing company, then come back over here first thing in the morning.”

“Darn,” she said. “I know my stuff isn’t worth much, but it’s my stuff and I’d like to at least know I have it back. Teresa has a teddy bear in there that she’s been wanting. Sometimes it’s been her only friend, and she’d feel better if she had it.”

“Nothing else we can do,” John shrugged. “Hey, guy. Thanks anyway.”

“Sorry I can’t help you out,” he said. “Don’t forget, you’re going to have a storage fee here when you come to pick up the stuff. Twenty bucks a day.”

“Boy, the city likes to get you coming and going, don’t they?”

“Them’s the rules,” he shrugged. “I don’t make them.”

Well, shit, John thought as he and Sally got back in the van. One simple goddamn thing he had to accomplish today and it didn’t get done because of petty horseshit rules and everything else under the sun getting in the way. “Sorry about that, Sally,” he said. “Stuff just happened. I should have gotten back to the hospital sooner.”

“I’ll survive,” she shook her head. “You tried, John. That’s what counts. It won’t hurt anything to wait till tomorrow morning. They could have kept the goddamn car. I could see yesterday that it won’t be anything, but I would like to have our clothes and a few things.”

“Yeah, but it pisses me off that they’re going to charge you to get rid of it,” he shrugged. “I don’t think it’s worth much more than scrap value, and that’s only a few bucks.”

“I’m going to have to do something about that, too,” she shook her head, “but I haven’t even thought about it since I know I have no idea where to start.”

“We’ll come up with something,” he told her, feeling exasperated.

It took another half hour to get over to Greenleaf Towing. Naturally, they wanted an outrageous fee to settle the tow bill, and another big fee to haul the car off to a junk yard when it had been released from the impound yard. It sounded like outright gouging to John, but the only thing he could do was reach in his wallet and pull out his credit card. From what he could see, the tow fees were well over the value of the car, and that had to have been before it had been wrecked.

What the hell would Sally have done if he hadn’t been able to deal with that? No money, no clothes, nothing but an injured kid who needed more care than she would have been able to give her. Boy, when you’re down on your luck in this world, you’re really screwed, aren’t you?

The hell of it was, he’d seen this general kind of thing happen before, and to people who didn’t have someone like him around to help out. God, that had to be the shits, he thought.

“Well, I guess there’s not much we can do but get you back over to the hospital,” he said, trying to mask his ruminations. “I’ll head back to my office and try to get some work done this evening, since I didn’t get much done today that I really had to do. I’ll shoot to pick you up around eight or so. We can stop someplace for dinner. It’ll be late, but since we both had a late lunch it shouldn’t matter too much.”

“I guess I don’t see much else that can be done,” she agreed. “John, I don’t know how I can thank you for all you’ve tried to do for Teresa and me. I know you’ve seen her, but not when she’s been making much sense. Today I tried to tell her how good it was that an old schoolmate popped up when I least expected him to, and that you’re trying to help us out. When you get to know her, I think you’ll come to like her. She really is a pretty good kid.”

“If you’re going to be staying with me for a while, I guess I’ll get to know her,” he shrugged. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.”

A few minutes later John dropped Sally off in front of the hospital. It could take twenty minutes or a half hour to go up and meet Teresa, and right at the moment he felt as if he’d lost so much time that day he didn’t have any to waste. “See you around eight,” he told Sally, gave her a little wave, and drove back toward his office.

Christ, what a day, he thought. The Pineview thing had to be done, and there was no way around it, but it had just cut the guts out of the day. A couple hours earlier he’d at least have been able to settle the issues around Sally’s car and their things, but the time just hadn’t been there. I can’t let the time get away from me tomorrow like it did today, he thought; there was just too much else that needed to be done.

Still feeling frustrated over the business with Sally’s car, he expended some effort on trying to get his mind back on business as he drove back toward Suncoast. Once again, the Tomtucknee Regional bid came back to mind; he had to get something thought out about that, and he’d lost better than a day on it. As he recalled, there was no huge rush on getting the bid together since the deadline was several days away, but it could take those several days to come up with something that Voss couldn’t match so as to get the business for sure.

By the time he reached the office he had two or three critical points he thought needed further investigation. The office was locked up and dark when he got there; Annamaria had obviously gone home for the day, and only his Toyota was left sitting in the parking lot. He parked the van in the garage out back, and went into his office, where he set the computer to booting up. While he waited, he headed into the bathroom to tap a kidney, something that had been getting to be an issue for a while. Feeling much relieved, he sat down at his desk and noticed something disturbing: his computer hadn’t come on. It sat there dead and dark, as if he hadn’t pushed the button, or something.

Shit, he thought as he reached out, wiggled the plug and stabbed the button again. Nothing is going right today! The computer just sat there, not showing any signs of life – no lights, no sound of the hard drive, no nothing.

Now what the hell?

In only a couple minutes, it became clear: the computer was dead. John was no computer expert, although he knew how to use his, but it was clear that something was on the fritz, and if he had any idea what it was, he had no idea how to fix it. He glanced at his watch: after five, now. Without even thinking about it, he knew there was no chance in hell of getting a computer tech over to look at the thing before morning, and then he might have to unplug it and take it to some shop somewhere. At the absolute best, it would shoot half the morning in the ass, even if it only took ten minutes to fix it.

And the hell of it was that several things he knew he needed to work on were on the hard drive – the information he needed on the Tomtucknee deal, for example, and whatever the hell the thing was Tom had come up with earlier. There should be an e-mail from him on that, but without the computer there was no way to see what it was.

Well, there was – Annamaria’s computer was on her desk, and he could at least check the company e-mail on it. He didn’t want to do much else with it, since she had it set up the way she wanted it and never was happy about him messing with it. That was fine; he did things his own way and wasn’t happy about Annamaria messing with his computer, either, although she had to once in a while.

The hell with it, he thought. There’s still some stuff that I can do without the computer, like the proof for the mailing. That was a hardcopy, at least. There was probably some other underbrush on his desk that he could deal with, too. It would probably hold him till he had to go pick up Sally.

With any kind of luck, he thought, tomorrow ought to go better, but he didn’t have high hopes for it.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.