2 posts tagged “emergency”
The wife had Intralase Lasik last Friday.
I was freaked out. Turned out fine.
Youngest daughter winged a ball at wife's face the next day.
I freaked out. Missed the eyes, turned out fine. She can read the 20/20 eye chart line.
Eldest daughter fell out of bed Monday night.
Gashed the back of her head on the bottom corner of a dresser.
I freaked out and got a lot of blood all over me while I held her.
After a trip to the ER at Midnight and three staples, turned out fine.
Youngest smacked eldest in the back of the head with a (hard) toy dragon.
I freaked out. Wound didn't open, no new blood, just a headache for eldest, so, you know, fine.
Eldest wants to go to preschool today as there are only a few sessions left for this school year.
I take her and find out today they're doing an inflatable bouncy-house all day because it's storming outside.
I freaked out. I'll find out in an hour if anything got bumped loose, but I haven't gotten an emergency call yet.
She has a follow-up doctor appointment today anyway.
Wife has a follow-up eye appointment tomorrow.
Me, I've about exhausted my freak-out for the week.
Plenty of Boulevard Brewery mixed-packs, Bacardi Solara Rum, vodka, and tequila though... so I might make it yet.
The curtain raised.
Lights rippled in nauseous symmetry.
Awareness that something was very, very not right.
Coldly, the knob stiffened and though clicking would not budge.
"The key! Try the key!" screamed the overly well-dressed man soberly in the top hat, gloves, and tails.
I shook him aside for I'd known of him before and also that he only resided in my mind.
Good suggestion though, I'll give him that much, though I don't have a crumb to spare at this early hour.
Digging for the key. Another and another, but none for this door.
The knob hadn't gotten any warmer for the sunlight it began to reflect.
It clicked, just as stiff, and locked, as ever.
"Call the cops!" from the old woman in the rocking chair on the other side of my mind from the overly well-dressed man.
"I haven't broken in" I scold her, "yet."
"No, no, they carry keys! Not just cuffs, and the keys to them, but also the very keys you need to let you in this door past that cold lock! They're the ones what usually unlock the door before you get here. Hurry, call the cops!" She chides.
I hadn't thought much about who usually unlocked the door before I got there.
It was always dark.
I was always dark, in other ways.
Not yet on.
Just like the station.
Dormant.
Waiting.
Still.
But no longer motionless. I sprinted for the call box in the parking lot. Nervous, I have no idea what to expect.
Will I be in trouble? I didn't even know how these things work. I fumble opening the door, but there's no handset to fall out and nobody to see me flinch away in the dark.
But not so dark, under the streetlight, over the call box.
A squawk, no, a voice. A cop!
Uh, right, uh, "Hi!"
I don't think that's what they usually hear in dispatch when they answer a call from an emergency call box.
Emergencies, valid ones, don't stand on formality. No flirting, and all business.
"This is the police."
I knew it, it was a cop!
"Uh, hi, uh, I work at the station, I'm a student, and I'm supposed to turn it on, but the door is still locked."
That was, mostly, professional, right? Sure. Hit all the important parts.
"You don't have a key?"
I'm distracted for a bit because the overly-dressed man has just knocked the old lady out of her rocker.
I'm back.
"Uh, no." Don't be rude. Don't mention that if I had a key, I wouldn't be calling from the parking lot emergency call box.
I wouldn't be calling from inside the station either.
If I possessed the key, they wouldn't be hearing from me at all.
"I'm one of the students, only the staff have keys, and they've been giving me this shift by myself lately without a chapperone."
Still, crackling silence.
"How soon do you need it open?"
"Uh, my watch has five 'til, so I need to be inside and have it on by about four minutes from now."
That would be cutting it ridiculously close. Cartoonishly close. I could get something on. It wouldn't be right, but it'd be something. Then I could get the recording from the satellite feed setup and then transition into the correct programming.
My mind ached.
That was way too clearly organized for this time of morning and that little sleep.
I realized the emergency call box line was dead, the shell still open, and I was still standing in front of it.
Sprinting back to the station. Cursing each stair. Sirens in the distance.
Did they really need sirens this time of morning, on a weekend, on an empty commuter campus?
"Don't berate the cops. They have guns." advised the old woman, righting herself in her chair with her cane.
The overly well-dressed man snickered, while he pissed in the corner.
"Hey, don't do that all over my mind!" I protested.
The cop was standing in front of me.
She'd be pretty if the body armour under her uniform didn't completely distort her shape the way it did.
I probably looked like I'd just been yelling at a man in my head to stop pissing on me.
She went to work on her keychain. Hundreds of keys. Not marked.
I looked at my watch. Two minutes to go... and what looked to be several hundred keys.
I was getting a bit ancy.
She noticed me getting ancy and her hand went to her holster instinctively.
Crazy as it sounds, I was more concerned by her having stopped looking for the right key than I was her hand on her gun.
If I hadn't been so groggy, I would have been the one doing the peeing.
"Hey, is that the one?" I offered, seeing a familiar looking key dangling off the ring.
The gun hand took the key and tried it. Click. Turn. The door creaked and moaned as it swung into darkness.
I bolted in, hitting lights, turning the corner, diving into the control room and jamming fingers onto the transmitter power button.
Wooof.
We were on.
Dials bounced, music played, and the town woke up to rather inappropriate music blaring from their alarms instead of the usual reserved and proper national newscast.
The station manager got calls.
I would get a mild reprimand.
And the cop took me out for coffee later.
