Chapter Three: Once More, With Feeling!

Chapter Three: Once More, With Feeling!

2:15 p.m. Saturday, July 1

 

Briiiing!...Briiiing! Damned cell phone, I thought as I fished it out of the pocket of my jacket that was lying beside me.  I flipped it open and answered.

“..Hello?”

The replying voice accompanied by the familiar background noise already marked this as a call from work.

 

“Good day Mr. Garcia. We know that it’s your day off, but one of our paramedics that were on shift tonight has a nasty case of pneumonia and he can’t make it in for a while. We were wondering if you would mind taking his shift for tonight.”

Ah, hell. No rest for the wicked, I guess they say. Sighing, I answer the dispatcher.

“Yeah, no problem…Sheryl, right? I can come in. It starts at four, right?”

“Yes, Mr. Garcia. And yes, as well.”

“Alright then. As I remember, you’re quite the striking blonde. How about you and I go out sometime and..”

“Ahem, Mr. Garcia. Excuse me, but I have to go. I do have a job. Good bye.” Click. 

I guess I couldn’t blame myself for trying. Oh well. It was more of a game I play with those dispatcher girls anyway. If one of them actually agreed to a date, one of us would eventually have to cancel due to work and never get around to rescheduling. One day, I will eventually get a successful date out of one of them and I wouldn’t know what to do.

But then again…Would they?

But that was enough of that train of thinking for now. I had laundry to do in time to get to work. But never start the day without the essential vitamins, my dear mother always said.

Now where’s that bottle..?

3:30 p.m.

Vroom…I cranked the Explorer and pulled out of my apartment complex’s parking lot. I turned onto the access road and then merged onto the main road that lead to basically everywhere in Huntsville you wanted to go with only a few turns needed once you took an exit off in some direction. It was a great thing, but it always elicited the same thought as most anything else that involved this town.

            God, how I hate South Huntsville traffic.

            I didn’t live very far from the hospital, so I didn’t really have to worry about rushing to make my mammoth I called a vehicle get past a light or change lanes into a small gap in a line of traffic. There was simply no need. I don’t like to rush things, and I didn’t see the point in making yourself so stressed out and anxious just to shave a minute off of your travel time. I’ve seen too many wrecks where a rattled person was recounting to the police, much to the dismay of their insurance agents, that they were simply trying to make that second and a half window when it was ‘okay’ to run a red light in the because it was red for everyone. No dice there, my friends. It’s never okay to do stupid crap like that. Not when it could cost you your life. Or even worse, it could cost someone else their life. I know damn well I will be happy if I got laid off for lack of work.

            Well, at least the idealist in me. The real me, the one that eats and drinks, kinda needs the money, most likely.

            Signal. Wait and check the mirrors. Change lanes. It was that simple to avoid an accident. The one thing that pisses me off more than anything are these young d*********s who think it makes them a bigger person to weave in and out of traffic and piss off everyone in their wake. God, how I wished I was a cop at times. Too bad this city lost its motorcycle policemen years back. They made people a bit more wary to be stupid because that’s all the motor-cops did. They wrote tickets and lightened the wallets of idiots like them. Hell, a small part of those tickets pay my salary. Maybe I should try to get the city to reinstate that part of the force, now that I think about it.

            Signal. Wait and check the mirrors. Change lanes once more to get around a truck hauling a trailer. There was easy cruising, and then there just was plain out slow. I didn’t feel like being that easy going. Apparently the station was short on people tonight, so I should not be late. Who knows? I may even get yelled at.

            “Heh…Not like I never got used to that,” I chuckled out loud. Before the military, I was used to just taking someone making an unnecessary fool out of themselves by yelling in my face, and afterwards just desensitized me even more so. This hospital admins were far from the mark of making me upset over such a thing as tardiness.

            Ahead and to my right, I see an eighteen-wheeler take an exit off to the right. What was odd was that that one led only to residential areas. Oh well. Must be new to town, I guess.

            Signal. Wait and check the mirrors. Oh, here’s my exit. Time to change lanes right on ove-WHAM!

            My Explorer is suddenly spinning out of control and now perpendicular to the flow of traffic. Horns… Blaring horns all around me. Screeching tires add in their voices.

Whump! And I’m spinning. The Explorer’s spinning. I’m tumbling end over end and in a quick glance through the window I see the ramp that led to my current problem. It was a gray van, low enough to launch my Explorer’s hefty a*s into the air and flipping like a poorly thrown football.

At this point, I realized I wasn’t panicking. I was analyzing. Just as any paramedic or cop would as they saw the aftermath of this scene. Oh, but here comes what I’ve never had to deal with before. The pavement, which was about to get a close up of my front end at God-knows-how-many miles an hour.

Oh s**t…Pain…Tunnel vision. Sweet oblivion…Utter darkness…

God, how I hate South Huntsville traffic.

Reviews

Hehe, "once more, with feeling" makes me think of that Un card.

Anyway, I like where this is going! You're writing is so.. natural, I feel like I'm listening to the character tell his story more than reading the fictional story of a writer! Keep it up!