by Shawn Grady
There were three more sets of numbers that appeared with different fold configurations – none of them reflecting a response time within the standard. All of them revealing dates that coincided with the last winter.
I sat back and thought through the feasibility of it all. Why wouldn’t someone within the company have spoken up by now? The fear of being fired could have silenced any tumult. Guys were driving faster to get to calls and avoid being reprimanded or let go. We were isolated and divided. Grief over long response times probably never made its way outside of the ambulance doors or the supervisor’s office. With dispatch being its own keeper, the alteration of a response time or two, or twenty, could be as simple as the stroke of a computer key.
So that’s what we’d verify – that the stats weren’t being manipulated to look better than they were. It was a simple plan with a plain reason.
I never imagined the avalanche of consequences that were to follow.
CHAPTER 24
Moonlight hung pale over the valley.
Way too bright for my first covert mission. I wore a baseball cap, as if that’d obscure my identity, and followed Naomi through the field that backed up to the helicopter pad. The reserve helicopter sat with rotors tied down, a small fluorescent light mounted on the building corner the only illumination. We skirted past the landing skids to the door leading to the flight-crew room. Naomi used the master key she’d been given when she worked a temporary desk job as continuing education coordinator. She turned the knob and cracked the door just enough to peek inside.
I glanced around. “What do you see?”
She raised a finger, then opened the door enough for me to slide past her into the small flight room. Light flowed in from the opposite door to the ambulance bay. Lockers lined the walls, interrupted only by an angled drawing board that held a large map of northern Nevada and California. Outside a car’s engine started up. I glanced at Naomi.
She took baby steps inside the room, letting the door against her back slide shut. “The swing-shift vehicle tech is going home.”
That meant that Joey, the night-shift tech, should be committed for at least thirty minutes doing the stockroom inventory. I poked my head through the ambulance-bay door. At least a dozen ambulances sat in the four garage bays, some parked three deep. More in that garage than out in the city. To our far right was the mechanic bay, with an ambulance perched on a hydraulic lift. The stockroom stood opposite, adjacent to the access door for the hallway that led to the business offices and, beyond that, dispatch.
I reminded myself that we weren’t doing anything illegal – at least not yet. I raised my eyebrows and Naomi nodded. I stepped through the door and felt instantly naked in the bright bay light, trying my best to be relaxed and stealthy at the same time.
We’d made it halfway across, amid sounds of plastic shuffling in the stockroom, when a metal pipe clanked on the floor in the mechanic bay. I caught Naomi’s eye, and she tugged on my arm, retreating us between two ambulances.
Someone cursed. Naomi stood behind me, her breath warm and constant on my neck. The voice carried out again, something unintelligible and unhappy. I recognized it. Mechanic Tom.
I tilted my head back and brought my mouth by Naomi’s ear. “He must be working late.”
She lifted my wrist to look at my watch – 11:17. “That’s really late.”
She was right. He got off at five. Six thirty on a late night. I whispered, “What do you think we should – ”
“Jonathan,” she said, full volume.
I creased my eyebrows, angry and confused that she spoke so loud.
“Jonathan, I think – ” she forced a laugh – “we’ve been caught.”
I turned my head to see Mechanic Tom staring at us from behind the ambulances. He held a chrome exhaust pipe streaked with welding scores. His Adam’s apple shifted.
He ran a thumb across his brow and cleared his throat. “Look, I don’t know what you two lovebirds are up to, and I don’t really care. As long as you don’t care to mention that we saw each other here. Deal?”
I breathed out. Tom had been working on a custom motorcycle, and the company would come down on him hard if they found out he was using Aprisa supplies for personal use. I forced a smile. “Your secret’s safe with us, Tom.”
He glanced around the bay, then nodded. “Good. I know Joey in the stockroom has my back. Wouldn’t take six-packs – just free use of my boat when he needs it.” He shook his head and looked at the floor. “Shrewd little businessman. But I can get you two something if – ”
“Don’t worry about it,” Naomi said, draping her arms around my shoulders. “We never even saw you.” She kissed me on the cheek and placed my arm around her waist. “Right, honey?”
I cleared my throat. “Right. Exactly. Sweetie. See who?”
Tom huffed. “All right, then.” He walked off, staring at the muffler and cursing something under his breath.
Naomi leaned back against an ambulance and exhaled. She smiled and pocketed her hands, glancing out at the bay and then back at me. “Now what?”
I brought my hands to the bridge of my nose in a tent. Tom wasn’t a snitch. He was a simple guy. If anything did go down, I don’t think we’d have to worry about him.
The fact remained that two men were dead. One body missing. Bones and I’d been screaming across town to barely make it in twice the time we should have been. Patients like Mrs. Straversky had suffered. Letell had given us clues – dates with times that were way out of the requirements. Someone didn’t want that to be common knowledge. Someone who had a stake in Aprisa’s business success.
I ran my fingers along my eyebrows to my temples. “We press on. We get in there and we find out if someone has been changing these response times.”
Naomi put a hand on my wrist. “Hold on. I know we talked about this. But what if Letell’s numbers are wrong? How do we know that the numbers Aprisa has for these dates aren’t the correct ones, if, in fact, they are any different in the computer?”
“We see who the medics were on those calls. We find out from them directly.”
“But who’s to say if they’d even remember?”
“Letell’s mother. The full arrest. That one should stand out for the crew that responded to it. Especially if they had a long response delay.”
She thought about it. “Okay. I’m with you.”
I took her hand and led her across the ambulance bay. It seemed to fit with the front we’d portrayed. But it felt like more than that. Her hand fit in mine as if it had been fashioned to be there.
We approached the door. Joey made quiet rustling noises in the stockroom. I pushed through and let the door close behind us.
The ceiling-mounted Exit sign lit the hallway. To one side sat the time-clock room and, midway down, the business offices. Beyond that was the entrance to dispatch. Naomi let go of my hand and took the lead to the billing-office door.
No need for a relationship ruse anymore.
She pulled the key from her pants pocket and took a last look both ways. This was it. No explaining this away. Even if we tried to play the lovebird shtick again, we couldn’t justify sneaking into the billing office. No. I saw it in her face, and we both knew it.
I thought of med school, of the actual number of days I had left to work for Aprisa. Only sixteen shifts. We could still turn back. We didn’t create the problem. We weren’t the ones understaffing the city. It was well beyond our pay grade. I could keep quiet, do my duties to the best of my abilities, and have my scholarship with no fear of it being revoked. Let karma sort it all out.
I saw Letell’s face, pale and stricken and determined. His hand on my shirt collar. “Give this to Martin. . . .”
I had to go forward.
Naomi inserted the key and turned the knob. She led us inside, past darkened cubicles to a small office with a windowed wall. The door to it was locked as well, but her key gained us access. Metal blinds covered a small window on the far wall. The de
sk held a couple small frames with photos of the current continuing-education coordinator holding a toddler. Naomi pulled up the swivel chair and powered on the computer. A longer set of plastic blinds hung on the windowed wall by the door to the office. I drew them shut. The familiar Windows start-up refrain played, and the blue log-in screen cast a pallid light on Naomi’s face.
She tucked that same rebellious strand of hair back and let her fingers fly across the keyboard. The screen changed.
I folded my arms. “Won’t she see that someone else has logged on?”
Naomi shook her head. “She gave me her password when she left for maternity leave. I never set up my own.” She double clicked an icon. “What’s the first date and time you have?”
I’d copied Letell’s numbers onto a note on my phone. “January twenty-second, nineteen minutes and forty-three seconds.”
She entered in the date, then whistled. “There’s more than a hundred entries for this day. How are we to know which call he was referring to?”
I propped a hand on the desk and looked over her shoulder. “This first date has to be for his mother.”
“Do you know that address?”
Mrs. Martin had mentioned it in passing. How could I forget? “Look for Apollyon Way.”
She filtered the results. “Yeah. Here we go. The house number is 2720.”
I watched her click through to the response times.
Dispatch: 09:51:01.
Enroute: 09:52:14.
On Scene: 09:56:55.
I did some quick subtraction. “This says it only took five minutes and fifty-four seconds to arrive from the time of dispatch.”
Naomi sat back. “And Letell is claiming almost twenty. What’s the next date?”
I read it off. And each one after that. Not one time corresponded with the computer’s. Conveniently, each time listed in the database showed the ambulance being on scene in less than five minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
I pulled a flash drive from my pocket and plugged it into a USB port. “Let’s get a copy of this.”
A thump sounded outside the office.
“What was that?” Naomi whispered.
I shook my head. Everything stayed quiet. I tiptoed to the office door, coaxed the bolt free from the doorjamb, and slid it open to a fine sliver.
My heart trampolined into my throat.
“Oh, Shintao.”
CHAPTER 25
Naomi raced to shut down the computer.
I waved at her. “Get under the desk.”
“What?”
“No reason for both of us to get caught.”
“Jonathan, I’m not going to leave you hanging.”
“Just get down.”
“We’ll play off like we’re lovebirds again.”
“Won’t work. I’ve already thought through it.”
Shintao approached.
I furrowed my brow and waved her down. The computer monitor flicked off. She slinked under the desk.
The office door pushed open. Shintao stood in a black overcoat, the green exit sign giving him the appearance of a stage villain in limelight. I was ready for him to pull out a nunchuck-looking device that converted into a coat hanger.
I made like I just happened to be on my way out, delivering my best nonchalant air. “Mr. Shintao. Surprise to see you this time of night. Putting in some late hours?” I had every reason to be there. Of course. Completely natural.
His head twitched as if he just did a hard reboot. “I . . . I have ample reason to be here by virtue of an emergency board meeting I called.”
They would have held that meeting in the supervisors’ office adjacent to dispatch.
He straightened the lapels of his overcoat. “You, however, Paramedic Trestle, have no reason to be snooping around the business office near midnight.”
I laughed. It sounded so hollow and fake. Daytime Emmy worthy. “No doubt, no doubt.” I shook my head. Chuckled. Wiped an eye.
He let out a long, slow breath through his nostrils. “And so . . .”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “And so.” My mind flipped through options. A: Keep playing it off. B: Push him over and run. C: Tell the truth. D: . . . I didn’t have a D yet.
Shintao waited. With his shoulder-padded overcoat he looked like a helmetless Samurai.
“Look,” I said, “I won’t lie to you. I’ve been backed up on charts for a week now. We’ve been getting slammed out there. I know billing demands that we have them done by the end of shift, but I can’t keep up. I’ve got a life outside of work, you know.”
His head tilted up. He was listening. I just had to set the hook.
“I took what you said the other day to heart. I didn’t want to risk getting put on your bad list again, so I figured I’d come in here and get them done before the next business day.” My statement about his advice could go one of two ways – either he’d take it as me blaming him for my predicament, or his already inflated ego would be puffed up further by the thought that I feared his reprimand. I was banking on the latter.
His body language relaxed from guarded to a swagger. He motioned with his hand when he spoke. “So you thought, Mr. Trestle, that you would make your situation better by further breaking company policy. Is that it?”
I rolled with it, channeling my pumping adrenaline into a façade of penitence. “I know. I know. Looking at it now . . . it was such a foolish thing. I just keep making things worse. I don’t – ”
“No, no. Don’t put yourself down. You’ve made a mistake. Now stand up to it.”
I nodded my head. My eyes were actually watering. I couldn’t believe I was getting away with it. “You’re right. You’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
“Yes. Of course you are.”
He studied me, reassessing my credibility.
Don’t lay it on too thick, Jonathan.
I had to recover – be a little defiant to dismiss suspicion. Out of nowhere I pounded the desk.
Shintao jumped. In my peripheral vision I saw Naomi wince and grab the top of her head.
“You guys just don’t give us enough time to do what we need to do.”
Shintao crossed his arms. “Ah, so it is management’s fault?”
I looked away and clenched my teeth.
He cocked his head to catch my eye. “Then why is it that everyone but you is able to keep up, Mr. Trestle?”
Recovery. He was still on my line. Time to reel him up and get out of there. “I just need to get faster at my charting.”
“Thorough is good. Speed will come in time. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I will schedule a four-hour remedial charting class for you to attend. That should help.”
I pocketed my hands and nodded.
“But keep in mind, Mr. Trestle, that violating company policy is not the way to get ahead. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Now, go home. And stay after shift next time if you need to finish reports.” He stepped aside and stretched his hand toward the hallway door.
I was hoping he’d follow me. “Thank you. Can I walk you out?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
I had no choice but to walk on. I had the feeling he was watching me the entire way out, but I didn’t dare look back. I opened the door to the hallway and threw a quick peek. He’d disappeared from sight, and the door to the continuing-education office was now closed.
I walked down the sidewalk in front of Aprisa. Once I made it half a block and was out of sight of the building, I doubled back between a couple businesses and hopped a fence into the field that Naomi and I initially approached the building from.
I sat on the front bumper of my car and waited. Twenty minutes passed before my phone vibrated with a text from Naomi.
I’m out.
I wrote back, Meet you at my car.
She hiked back through the field, her form silhouetted and slender in the moonlight.
It was difficult to mak
e out her expression.
I stood. “You all right?”
She rubbed her head. “I do have a headache.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Sorry about that. Did he see you?”
She shook her head.
I inhaled a deep breath. “I can’t believe we made it. We actually made it.”
She stared at the pavement.
“What?”
“He found the flash drive.”
Shock at two hundred joules. I had difficulty finding words. “What?”
“He didn’t see me. But I saw him take the drive. He put it in his jacket pocket.”
I punched the hood of the car. My knuckles burned. “That’s it. I’m screwed.” I ran my hands through my hair. “That’s it. He’ll see exactly what I was doing in there.”
“Maybe it won’t mean anything to him. Maybe he’s not involved.”
“How could he not be? He’s the numbers guy. He can’t be in the position he’s in and not know.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“So . . . what? What do I do now?”
“Keep showing up for work.”
“And act like nothing is wrong?”
“Exactly.”
“And just wait for the hammer to come down? They’re going to know.”
“Maybe. Whoever ‘they’ are.”
“Which leaves me as a target. They’ll be lying in wait.”
“Which may bring them out of hiding.” She sat beside me on the car. “But we’ll get the jump on them.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think it’s time we take this to the police.”
CHAPTER 26
Daytime made the previous night’s events seem like the substance of a dream.
From my pillow I stared at the light edging around the drawn blinds.
All would continue to be as it had been. Right? The sun followed its predictable path. The days grew warmer. I could just forget about everything, quit Aprisa now and take a couple weeks’ vacation before starting med school.
The plan sounded outright plausible. A very practical and reasonable course of action. Why let myself get further caught up in something I had nothing to do with? I needed to attend to my future, my aspiration.