“They can’t do that,” he fumed, all the anger he’d been suppressing the last couple hours boiling to the top again. “That’s totally illegal. Hospitals are hospitals, they’re not prisons. They can’t hold someone for ransom. Where do they get off pulling this kind of shit?”

“Maybe they can’t,” she replied, “but they’re doing it.”

“They can’t do it,” he said. “It would be illegal imprisonment. You have every right to take Teresa out of the hospital whenever you damn well please. I think some hospital administrator has a hair up his ass because he thinks he has you over a barrel. Doesn’t he understand that Teresa is a charity case, or maybe a Medicaid case?”

“Apparently not,” she said. “He said the hospital had to be assured of payment.”

“What a crock of horseshit,” he said, the anger inside him building even higher. “It’s the same damn thing those fuckwads at the towing service were pulling on you, and I haven’t even told you about their latest stunt yet. Get someone helpless and shove the shaft up their ass while they can. Hospitals may be cleaner but ethically it’s the same goddamn thing, except that it looks like the hospital is even more full of shit.”

“You may be right,” she said, obviously feeling his anger, “but John, what are we going to do? If they keep her here, they’re just going to keep running up the bill. It’ll probably be thousands of dollars a day. I can’t afford it now, there’s no way I could afford that.”

Aware that he was getting extremely pissed, John stopped and counted to ten mentally. Yes, he realized as he counted, he may have been angry, but his anger wasn’t doing anything to solve the situation. “I don’t know,” he said finally, “but it’s not going to stand. I’ll come up with something. You’re sure the doctor said it was all right to release her?”

“Yes, he even told her she was going to be leaving today. Now that idiot from the administration has her all in tears.”

“Tell her to pull herself together and quit crying. She’s leaving today if I have to walk in there and carry her out.” He took a deep breath and thought for a moment. “Look,” he said, “it’s lunch hour and there’s probably not a goddamn thing that can be done for a while. Everybody will be out to lunch, and even the secretaries won’t be around. Call me back in, oh, an hour and a half. If I’m not here, talk to Annamaria, she’s the gal who answers the phone. She might have a message for you, even if it’s to call back later. Let me see what I can do about this.”

“OK, John. I hope you can come up with something.”

“Oh, I’ll manage that, even if the Marines are involved,” he snorted. “I never heard such a crock of shit in my life.”

John hung up the phone, carefully making sure not to slam it. But, as soon as he was sure he was off the line, he exploded, “Jesus H. Fucking Christ crucified on a candy cane!”

Annamaria appeared at his door, looking alarmed. “John,” she said. “What now?”

“The short version is that Sally just told me those fuckwads at Cocalatchee General are trying to hold Teresa hostage over the bill,” he snorted. “Shit, I never heard of such a thing.”

“They can’t do that,” Annamaria said. “They can press people over a bill, they can send out collectors, but they can’t hold someone hostage.”

“There’s some idiot there who thinks he can,” he snorted. “Or at least thinks he can use the threat to bullshit her, same difference. Did you ever track me down a good shyster?”

“No, I told you there isn’t any such thing. You can look at the back cover of a phone book just as easily as I can.”

“Then let’s get finding one. This makes three things the right lawyer ought to be able to make a killing on and I’ll bet there will be more before this is over with.”

“We can find one,” she said, “but you know as well as I do that it could take weeks to settle something like this, and years before any money comes out of it.”

“So it takes years. So what? I want those bastards to be paying.”

“True, but it isn’t getting that little girl out of the hospital.”

John took several deep breaths. Once again, Annamaria was right. What’s more, she was the voice of reason, and he knew it. “Yeah, that really is the first thing on the list, isn’t it?” he said. “I suppose the logical thing to do is to go over and get her out of there. Once she’s out of their hands, she’s not in their possession and they can just fucking go to hell.”

“There’s no reason you couldn’t,” Annamaria said, “but if you run into that administrator, there could be a scene and things could get out of hand, especially as mad as you are right now. You might want to do it a little, uh, covert.”

“Yeah, that probably would be a good idea, wouldn’t it? I sure wouldn’t want to go out the front door with her, but anywhere else, well, even if there was a security guard around he wouldn’t know anything out of line was going on.”

“Probably true,” she agreed. “People are coming and going out of the emergency room all the time.”

John stared at her for a moment while the gears turned in his mind. “Yeah,” he said finally as he reached for his Rolodex. “That gives me an idea. Go find Warren, tell him to stick around in case I need him.”

“Is this something illegal, immoral, or fattening?”

“I’m sure that asshole at the hospital would think so,” he said, starting to dial the phone. “I could probably hop on the top administration and pitch a bitch, but it might take all day to get anything done and I don’t want the stink I’d stir up to get to whoever is trying to pull this. That might alert him. It’s probably some young buck wanting to win his spurs and look good, rather than policy, but let’s not take the risk.”

“Sounds smart.”

“I think so,” he said, finishing dialing the number. “Go find Warren.”

It took a couple minutes to get Hank Goldthwaite on the phone over at Missamanee Springs Volunteer Fire Department. Since John occasionally made volunteer EMT runs out of there, he knew Hank was retired, but spent most of his time hanging around the department, mostly because he couldn’t stand his wife’s TV blaring all the time. “Hey, Hank,” he said, “John Engler. What’s happening out in your shop today?”

“Not a damn thing,” he was told. “Been pretty quiet, and I like it that way. What can I do for you today?”

“Hank, the last time I was out there you still had your old ambulance for sale. Still have it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what you’d want that piece of shit for. The township board has told me to scrap it if we can’t get some real money out of it. Why, do you want an ambulance? I guarantee you, that’s not the one you want.”

“Well, I need an ambulance for a couple hours,” John said, “but I’m not quite in the mood to buy one. Does it still run, and does it still look like an ambulance?”

“It’s still lettered, but the light bar is gone along with all the outfitting. It runs, in fact the engine isn’t too bad, but it handles like a hog on skates and you’re always sure something is going to fall off it in the next ten seconds, like maybe the transmission.”

“Could I get thirty or forty miles out of it safely?”

“Odds are you could. You just want to take a piss before you get in it and grit your teeth when you drive it.”

Better and better. “Hank,” John started. This was the critical part. “If I was to borrow it, could it be done in such a way that no one but you knew I had it? I mean, now or later?”

“Well, let me put it this way. It’s parked out back. If the keys were in it and I didn’t know it was gone for a couple hours, when I went out to check it out tonight and found a fifty dollar bill above the visor, well, I wouldn’t know if it had actually gone anywhere, would I?”

“Done deal,” John replied. “You won’t look out your back window for a while, will you?”

“I get it,” Annamaria smiled. “You want me to go along on this little stunt?”

“No, I don’t think so. You’re around Cocalatchee too much. I am too, for that matter, but I think I can stay out of sight if I do it right. On the other hand, I don’t think Warren has made a run around here in years, so he should be the next thing to a stranger to them.”

“Good idea.” Annamaria was right up to speed with him, which was usually the case. “Let him take point. I don’t think you’re going to want to have the ambulance seen around here, or around your house, though. I mean, just in case.”

“Let’s see,” John said, glancing at the clock. “Sally is going to be calling back in, oh, about an hour and twenty minutes. That means I’m going to have to hustle to make it out to Missamanee Springs and back, and Warren and I will have to spot my car. That means you’re pretty well going to have to talk to Sally when she calls. Tell her to load Teresa in a wheelchair and take her out for a walk around the place, and have her down in the emergency room waiting area at, oh, let’s make it two-fifteen on the dot. You’ll have to describe Warren to her, and how he’ll be dressed. Try to tell her to look like she’s not nervous or in the process of pulling something.”

“The kid will probably still have an IV in her,” Annamaria pointed out.

“She did when I saw her this morning,” John told her. “It’s on one of those rolling stands, so we’ll just have Warren yank the IV right on the spot and leave the stand behind. I better remind him to take bandage shears and maybe a band aid or something.”

It was a longer haul than John had figured out to Missamanee Springs. He’d been there often enough, but the traffic was a little heavier than he had expected this time of day. He parked the Suncoast van out on the street, about three blocks up from the fire department – any more and he would have been in the residential section; the town was that small. He and Warren walked up the street and around behind the fire department, to find the old ambulance sitting just where Hank had promised it would be, with the keys in the ignition. It started right up – John wondered if Hank had come out and started it, just to be sure it ran. There was even some gas in the tank, at least if the gauge was right, although he wasn’t sure it could be trusted. Couldn’t be better.

Well, it could be better. The transmission was making some very funny noises when he pulled out of the parking spot, and the power steering was out, so steering the thing was about like trying to drive a tank. Already he’d found enough wrong with the old beater to make the department want to replace, rather than repair it, and he hadn’t even gotten up to speed yet.

“Jesus, what a piece of shit,” Warren said; he’d come along just so he’d know where to park the thing when he brought it back later. Both of them were wearing generic EMT uniforms from the stock John kept in his office. John figured Warren owed him something for all the Suncoast mileage reimbursement money he was putting into his divorce-lawyer account. “They ought to fucking pay someone to take it off their hands.”

“No shit,” John agreed. “We’re just lucky they haven’t offed it already.”

It was bad enough going down the street heading back toward Sarasota, but when he got it out on the highway it was just about like Hank had warned. There was a vibration he felt mostly in his bladder that might have come from tires – or maybe anything else – and the steering wheel shook like the front tires were way out of balance. It wasn’t that far to Sarasota, but John figured he’d feel every inch of it.

A few miles out, he glanced at the gas gauge. It had dipped alarmingly since he’d left Missamanee Springs, so he figured the old junker must be a gas hog, too. Fortunately, a gas station came up shortly, and he stopped to put twenty bucks worth in, just to be on the safe side. However bad it really was, he figured that ought to get them there and back.

They were just on the edge of Sarasota when two o’clock came. John pulled out his cell phone and called Annamaria. “Did you talk to Sally?” he asked.

“Yeah, no problem. She seemed to understand what you want her to do, and she said she’d even sneak down to the ER ahead of time to be sure she knew where she had to go. She said she’ll meet you on time.”

“That’s the key,” John told her. “I don’t want her waiting around there a minute more than necessary.”

“I reminded her of that. John, don’t be too nervous yourself. Remember, as far as anyone is concerned this is just a routine transfer to Manatee.”

“Yeah, but I still don’t want to get caught, at least by some asshole administrator who wants to make a big deal out of things. When and if they figure out what happened, I want to be the one holding the cards, not them.”

With an eye on his watch, John drove the old clunker into the ER parking lot just a couple minutes before the scheduled meeting. “Just play it cool,” he told Warren. “You know what to do. Give me a high sign if there’s any problems.”

“Will do.”

John parked the former Missamanee Springs ambulance in the emergency vehicle parking area near the ER entrance. Warren got out and headed inside, while John watched anxiously. In less than a minute, he came back out, pushing Teresa in the wheelchair John had left at home earlier; he and Warren had taken it when they spotted his car, and later moved it to the ambulance. Sally was walking alongside, trying to calm her daughter like a concerned parent.

As soon as he saw that, John got out of the ambulance, and trying to keep his face from being seen from the emergency room, walked around back, and helped Warren lift Teresa into the back of the ambulance, wheelchair, teddy bear and all. Sally clambered in after her, followed by Warren, then John closed the door and got back in the driver’s seat. “Sally,” he called back over his shoulder. “Lock the brakes on the wheelchair. We don’t have far to go, but we didn’t think of figuring out a way to tie it down till it was too late. I’ll try to keep it real easy.”

“I didn’t figure you were going to come get us in an ambulance,” she said.

“Well, we didn’t,” John said. “Former ambulance, yes. I’ll tell you about it later. Here we go.”

With a screech from the protesting transmission the old ambulance started moving. Driving as gingerly as possible, John eased it out onto the street. “Any problems, Warren?” he asked as soon as he had it on the street.

“Nope, went slicker than dog snot,” his salesman replied. “I don’t think anybody noticed anything. I think we changed chairs and got the IV out in under a minute.”

“Well, I don’t see any pissed-off hospital administrators chasing after us in the rear view mirror,” John said. “I think we’re close to getting away with it.”

“I can’t help but wonder how long it’s going to be before they notice she’s gone.”

“I’ll bet it won’t be soon,” John grinned. “If I recall correctly from the last time I was in there, the nurses don’t make rounds very often, at least on that floor. It probably won’t be noticed until the doctor makes his rounds. Failing that, probably not until late. With any kind of luck it’ll be after the shift has changed in the ER and nobody will know anything.”

“You hope.”

“Well, give us another hour and we should have both Teresa and the ambulance where they belong,” John smiled, “which is to say, out of sight and out of mind. I don’t think we’re in any legal trouble, but I’d just as soon not give someone the chance to try to find something to hang on us. All we’re really doing is taking a humpty on the hospital administration, not actually stealing anything.”

“Yeah, but still,” Warren shook his head.

They only went about three blocks before John pulled into the parking lot of a handy Winn-Dixie. Despite having lived in Florida for years, he was still northerner enough to think of it as “Lose-Dixie” but he knew better than to say that out loud, especially around people who drove pickup trucks with prominently displayed Confederate flags. Since the Toyota was well away from the store, there wasn’t anyone parked around it, so he could park right next to it.

He got out and went around to open the back doors. “Everything all right?” he asked.

“I guess so,” Sally said. “Boy, this thing sure rides rough.”

“Well, we’re done with it, as least as far as you and Teresa are concerned,” he said, then turned to the girl. “You doing all right, Teresa?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be going away from the hospital in an ambulance.”

“If you can call it that,” he said. “Look, we’re going to get you out of the ambulance here and into my car. Warren and I will lift you out, wheelchair and all, and then I’ll have to lift you into my car. It may be a little uncomfortable, but we’ll try to do it as easy as we can.”

“I’ll be all right, Mr. Engler.”

The transfer only took a couple minutes, and hopefully no one noticed, or at least wouldn’t ever say anything if they did. While John got her situated in the front seat and got her seat belt on, Warren folded up the wheelchair and put it in the trunk, while Sally got in the back. “All right, Warren,” he said when the transfer was complete, “go ahead and take that junker back like we talked about. Then, why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“The hell with that,” he replied. “That would mean I’d have to go home. I think I’ll hang around the office and get the work done I didn’t get to this afternoon.”

“Suit yourself,” John told him. “Just be careful driving that junk heap back.”

“The sooner I never see this thing again the better it’ll be,” he shook his head.

“Did the job,” John told him. “See you tomorrow, then.”

John got in the Toyota and started it up, making sure that Warren got away first. He thought he really ought to be the one taking it back out to Missamanee Springs, but he had to take Sally and Teresa home too. “Well,” he said, “that looks pretty much like that. Teresa, we’re going to my home, where your mom has stayed the last couple nights. I’m afraid we don’t have everything set up for you, because I wasn’t expecting you to get out of the hospital today.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Mom told me it might take a while to get settled in.”

“Well, I just hope it’ll be comfortable for you,” he said. “There’s quite a bit to be worked out, but I think we can all handle it.”

“The doctor said I was going to have these casts on for a couple months,” she said. “Is that really true?”

“Afraid so,” he told her, “and I know it’s not going to be easy, but we’ll try to struggle through it somehow. Your mom and I will try to do what we can for you.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be boring.”

“It probably will be,” he told her, “but we’ll try to make it go as easy as we can. I’ve got a couple ideas but it may take us a while to get them worked out.”

John drove on through the city, and out to his house, mostly talking lightly with Teresa, trying to reassure her. Finally, Sally spoke up from the back seat. “John,” she said, “what was that trouble with the tow company you were talking about?”

“Let’s not talk about it now,” he said. “We can deal with it later. It may be settled, but I don’t know for sure. It may come down to having an attorney show his fangs.”

“Well, I’m just glad to be out of that hospital trouble.”

“You’re probably not out of it yet, but maybe we’ve shoved it under the table for a while. At least we have Teresa now, so that simplifies things a lot.”

As John turned onto Tuttle, he began to take stock of things. He hadn’t gotten a lick of useful work done for Suncoast today, but at least this issue was solved for now. It seemed likely there would be more problems out there in the future. All of a sudden, he realized it was darn good the computer had crapped out on him, because he wouldn’t have had the option of doing some of the other stuff he’d put some time into today. That was fine, but he still had the Tomtucknee Regional bid he had to get done, along with a dozen other things he’d need the computer for.

But, that was an issue for tomorrow. He still had plenty of other things he needed to do today, and stocking up on groceries was one of them, along with helping get the bedroom set up for two occupants, and probably a million other little things he couldn’t even dream of. With Teresa essentially immobile except for the wheelchair, it looked to him like the next few weeks were going to be busy and complicated ones, but at least he felt like he’d been doing the right thing.

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