Читать книгу City Out of Time - William Robison III - Страница 12

The City

Later the same day - Relative

Lanz almost forgot that he had a brand new apartment waiting for him. The new apartment building looked like any other apartment building (tall, blocky, large glass windows, lots of chrome and faux marble in the lobby) except that it appeared to be unaffected by the ravages of time and big city existence – no sign of pollution nor graffiti.

Lanz took the elevator up to the eighth floor and stepped out into a long plain hallway with doors branching off on either side. He looked right and saw his apartment about two doors down from the elevator. There was a key ring jutting out of the lock with an envelope attached to it.

The door looked heavy, but it opened easily enough. The lights were on inside the apartment and Lanz could see that there was already furniture in place. He started to back out of the room thinking that someone else must live here, but stopped when he recognized his vintage first print Star Wars poster hanging on the wall in the stainless steel frame.

Lanz looked down at the plain white envelope attached to the key and saw that it was addressed, “TAC BLDG #809, LANZ FRANCO.” This appeared to be the right place.

“Hello?” he called out, but there was no reply.

Lanz laughed and walked into the apartment and looked around.

The main entry hallway had two closets off the entrance – presumably one for storage and one for hanging coats.

To his left, just inside the door, was the kitchen – stove, refrigerator, microwave, too little shelf space. There was a faux granite bar over the sink on the side opposite the stove that Lanz guessed was supposed to be the dining area. It opened the kitchen’s view into the living room.

Just past the refrigerator was a short hallway with two doors at the end of the hall - his bedroom and bathroom.

Beyond the short entrance hallway, the apartment opened out into a large living room which had a huge window as one wall. His apartment looked south over the river.

His computer was already set up on a desk, and most of the desk clutter from Las Vegas was recreated almost exactly. Lanz went to the desk, rifled through the stack of bills, junk mail, and the odd postcard he’d received from an ex-girlfriend who was stationed in Iceland. Was everything there?

He opened the desk drawers and began to pull out useless papers and junk that he’d stored in his desk in Vegas. The amount of effort that had gone into bringing his Vegas life to the City was evident, and prompted further searching. Finally, after a few minutes he found what he’d been hoping to find – the velvet box he’d been given in Iraq.

He opened the clasp and found things exactly as he’d left them – his Bronze Star Medal had its ribbon folded neatly on the velvet background. Lanz pulled the medal and the velvet out of the box and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the only photo he had of his mother carefully preserved underneath the velvet lining of the box.

For the next half hour, Lanz wandered from one drawer to the next, went through cabinets, and closets, and the refrigerator finding everything he could remember ever having with him had been restored to him. His entire past life was here in the apartment with him, represented in knickknacks, ticket stubs, and lots of useless junk. And all of it now transplanted into some new drawer, cabinet, or closet.

At the end of his trip down memory lane, Lanz collapsed into his favorite recliner set strategically with a view of the city beyond and mused upon his new life and new apartment.

It was well past midnight before Lanz’s reverie ended and he realized that he needed to get some sleep. He turned off the lights around the apartment, made sure that his door was locked, then went into his bedroom, climbed into his made bed, set his alarm for early the next morning, and finally, went to sleep.

Surprisingly, the sound of rain on his window woke Lanz before the alarm went off less than six hours later. Lanz sat up in bed and looked out the smaller bedroom window to the dark skies beyond. Rain wasn’t unknown in Las Vegas, but in April it was pretty rare. Lanz looked around his bedroom and the familiarity of it momentarily disoriented him.

Then he remembered where he was and why he was here.

Lanz got out of bed and went into the bathroom. His shower was different than the one in Vegas and it took him a few minutes to get used to it. His mind wandered for a moment as he wondered why something as simple as a shower had so many different variations in design. In his experience, no two showers were ever the same. The sound of Lanz’s alarm clock broke him out of his reverie and Lanz had to hurry out of the shower to turn it off before it woke the neighbors.

All of his clothes from Vegas were in his new room’s closet and dresser – except, unfortunately, for the clothes he’d packed into the car for his epic soul searching journey. In fact, none of the things from the car had found their way into the apartment. Lanz wondered if he’d ever see any of those things again.

By the time he was done dressing, brushing his teeth, etc... Lanz thought he might be late to work on his first day. He grabbed a banana off of the refrigerator and headed out the door.

Lanz had mapped the route to work the night before. There was a trolley that ran along the left bank of the river on Chester A. Arthur Avenue. Lanz ran through the rain to the trolley stop and caught the first trolley as it came rolling up. He was only mildly wet.

The trolley and rain stopped about a block from the hospital at Illinois Street. Lanz hopped off there and walked one block north to James. A Garfield Way and looked up to see the hospital.

It wasn’t terribly impressive. It looked older than the more modern and sleek Desert Springs Hospital, but it wasn’t old fashioned like Bethesda or one of the master hospitals of the east coast. As a building that dated from about the start of World War II, it had a sturdy and utilitarian look. It looked like a hospital, but that wasn’t necessarily a compliment.

Lanz crossed the street and entered the hospital through the main entrance. He was greeted by an orderly at the admissions desk who looked up the moment he walked in.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m Lanz Franco,” Lanz said. “Today’s my first day.”

“Right,” said the orderly, “You want to go to the employee’s entrance on the west side of the building near the emergency entrance. They’ll get you situated there.”

“Thanks,” Lanz said.

He went out the front door and around to the west side of the hospital. The emergency area was rather obvious, with huge signs in bright neon, but it took Lanz a few moments to find the dark single doorway set into the wall about fifty feet away from the emergency entrance. Lanz passed a couple of EMT’s waiting in their ambulance, looking bored. Bored was a good thing in the hospital industry.

Lanz walked into the employee entrance and was greeted by another orderly the second he came in the door.

“Hi,” she said, “You’re new here. I’m Julia. Welcome to City Hospital. If you have any questions, feel free to find me and ask away.”

“Thanks, Julia,” Lanz said. “Where do I go now?”

“New guys go down the hall and to the left. You’ll find a locker room there. Go ahead and change into your scrubs and wait by your locker. Someone will find you.”

Lanz followed Julia’s directions and easily found the locker room. There were about 100 lockers and each had a name plate on them. Lanz didn’t take long to find the locker with his name on it – written in black marker on a temporary piece of tape. He opened it and found a fresh set of scrubs. After he changed, Lanz sat by his locker and waited.

For the next ten minutes other workers walked into the locker room, changed into their scrubs, and then walked back out into the hospital to start their shifts. Not a normally talkative lot to begin with, no one greeted Lanz. In fact, no one even acknowledged his existence. Lanz didn’t really mind. He was used to the new guy treatment.

Soon, however, Lanz noted that there were a couple of other guys in the locker room that were doing as he was. Lanz looked to them for some mutual sympathy, but they all were preoccupied with their own new guy status. Nobody spoke.

Finally, after the last regular worker had departed for his shift, a Charge Nurse entered the locker room, sized up the new recruits, and said, “New guys… with me.”

He turned around and left the locker without looking to see if anyone was behind him. Lanz and the others scurried to catch up. The Charge Nurse walked to the maintenance elevator and stood there with a clipboard.

“Welcome to the City Hospital,” he said without much conviction, “You are on probationary status starting today. If you pan out, you will be assigned a more permanent position in 30 days. In the meantime, you work for me. I am Terry Middlestad. Just ask anyone for Terry and they’ll find me. Once you are done with an assignment, I expect you to come find me right away for a new assignment. There are three breaks – fifteen minutes at 10am, one hour at lunch, and another fifteen minutes at 3pm. Are there any questions? No. Good. Moving on… Spazick… Spawack… Spazz?”

“It’s Spaciezki,” Spazz replied.

“Whatever,” Terry said. “They need you in the kitchen. Take a plunger.”

“Where do I get a plunger?”

“Find a plumber,” Terry replied. “Now go… you’re late already.”

Spazz sighed deeply and then started off down the hall, clearly without a clue as to where he was going.

“Franco?”

“Yes, sir,” Lanz replied.

“Grab a mop. Toilet on three overflowed.”

Lanz knew better than to ask where to get a mop. He turned around and started walking through the ground floor looking for a janitor’s closet. He found one, opened it to find a mop and a rolling mop bucket, and started back towards the service elevator.

The irony that Lanz’s first day on his new job started exactly the same way as the last day of his old was not lost on him. But, he guessed, it was probably an aberration, or a shakedown period, and if he stuck it out, they’d probably start giving him better jobs.

Lanz didn’t see any of the other new guys all day, but he saw plenty of Terry. No matter how fast Lanz did his jobs, Terry was waiting with some new task even filthier than the one before. Lanz mopped the bathroom on three, saw-dusted barf in pediatrics, cleared the grease trap in the kitchen, and climbed into the compactor outside to get it to work. By five o’clock, he was exhausted, smelled bad, and was desperately hungry because he hadn’t had time to stop all day for a bite to eat – though, to be fair, with the kind of work he’d been doing, food hadn’t been a high priority.

Just as Lanz was changing into his street clothes, Terry entered the locker room and said, “Franco. They need you in the ER.”

Lanz hesitated before climbing back into his smelly scrubs, but the thought of going to the ER and doing some real medicine enticed him. He hurried to the ER as fast as he could get there.

“One of the ambulances is leaking oil,” said the ER nurse, “We don’t want anyone to slip in it.”

Lanz didn’t get back to his apartment until nearly 8pm. He was almost too tired to eat, and whatever it was that he pulled out of the refrigerator and stuffed into his face was not memorable. He fell into his recliner, looked out over the City, and slowly fell asleep.

The next day was no better than the first. Work never seemed to end and it was always disgusting and menial. Lanz came to hate the very sound of Terry’s voice.

There seemed to be an unwritten rule about guys in their trial period at the hospital. It didn’t matter who the new guy was, they were always called New Guy, if they were called anything at all – except by Terry. None of the other doctors acknowledged them when they were in the locker room, and nobody ever sat with the new guys at lunch. They were persona non grata… or worse, non-persons entirely.

Lanz was frustrated and getting hacked off about the entire situation. He was almost starting to think he’d made a mistake leaving Las Vegas. But Lanz knew that he was going to have to tough it out.

Clearly, he wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure. As they were all preparing to go home for the day, Terry came into the locker room again.

“Spazz, they need you on the roof in the AC room. Bring a tool belt.”

“First of all,” Spazz said, standing up to face Terry, “My name is John. Or Spaciezki, if you can manage it. Second of all, I am a trained nurse, not a mechanic. And third of all, my shift is done and I’m going home.”

Terry came into the locker room and walked right up to Spazz.

“Is that so?”

“That’s the way it is,” Spazz confirmed.

“Nobody made you pick this job,” Terry replied. “You can always ask to be reassigned if something else strikes your fancy.”

“Nothing else does. But I want to do the job that I signed up for.”

“You are doing the job you signed up for.”

“I’m not a mechanic. Nor a plumber. Nor a janitor. I am a nurse.”

“You work for a hospital… John. All of those jobs needed doing. And you did them. Did a pretty good job from what I hear,” Terry noted. “Do you deny that these jobs needed doing?”

“No, of course not.”

“But they’re somehow beneath you?”

“They’re not taking full advantage of my skill set,” Spazz replied.

“Now you have a new skill set,” Terry said. And he slapped Spazz on the arm and turned around to leave.

“I don’t want to be a mechanic,” John said defiantly. “I’m wasting my time and the hospital’s time. I’d be better off with patients.”

“Wasting your time?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me… John… where can I find a hacksaw?”

“Basement tool locker.”

“And who do I call if I need a plunger?”

“The plumber, Sergio.”

“And his extension?”

“25.”

“How long did it take you to learn all that?”

“Two days,” Spazz noted.

“Tell me one other hospital with such a trained and knowledgeable staff, Spazz, and you can go home right now.”

Spazz’s mouth opened but no other words came out.

“Right. Roof. Tool belt. And hurry. You’re keeping them waiting.”

The weekend arrived and Lanz quickly discovered that he didn’t really know anyone or anything about the City. He went home on Friday night and collapsed. On Saturday morning, he vowed to discover three things – how to feed himself, how to call someone and how to fill up the hours of his free time. He dressed for the day and went out into the City.

The last one turned out to be the easiest. He walked towards the Plaza and heard the sound of music playing long before he got there. As he crossed the bridge on Hawaii Street, he could see the nearby Plaza jammed with a crowd pleasing carnival.

Colorful balloons, calliope music, jugglers, clowns, musicians, and even a couple of carnival booths and rides filled the central plaza to the brim. People walked around the area laughing and having a good time. Lanz found a corn dog booth and after observing for a few moments realized that they were just giving the corn dogs away. He walked up and got one covered in mustard and an ice cold soda to go with it.

As he wandered through the carnival it struck him how normal the whole thing was. Lanz had to admit that ever since he’d discovered that he was a time traveler his life and world made sense – like the outside world was some sort of drab pale companion of the City. Granted, he wasn’t a big fan of the hospital so far, but he knew that one day he’d be a doctor or nurse and doing the thing he really loved – helping to save people’s lives.

As Lanz walked past the entrance to Corps Headquarters, it occurred to him that he might get answers to his practical questions if he were to ask either Seth or Celeste. Listening to another lecture on how he really ought to see the Orientation film was worth it if it meant a refrigerator full of edible food and a television.

Lanz went back to the Corps Headquarters entrance and walked down the stairs.At the bottom of the stairs was a long corridor that was lit but that didn’t seem to lead to anything that he knew. Somehow, in the confusion of the carnival, he had misjudged the correct set of stairs. The Headquarters had to be below the Plaza somewhere though, so Lanz walked down the corridor in the direction that led back under the Plaza.

At the end of the corridor a sign on the wall pointed left to Corps HQ, Judicial Branch HQ, and Central Processing. To the right, the corridor would eventually lead to the Plaza Tube Station. Lanz turned left and continued down the hallway.

He went past a half dozen heavy black metal doors and a large set of double doors with the Judicial Branch HQ insignia on them, before the hallway sloped downward and Lanz realized where he was.

He was entering the Corps Processing room at the top of the long ramp that led down to the cargo unloading area. Sure enough, Lanz looked out the archway into the domed room of Central Processing and saw a stream of curious and sometimes frightened travelers arriving at the City for the first time. It was fascinating to watch, and to realize that he’d only been in the City himself for less than a week and he already felt like a citizen.

Lanz was about to turn and head towards Corps HQ when he heard someone call out, “MEDIC!” from within the Central Processing room.

Lanz turned and saw the crowd parting for a newly arriving Corps team. They were carrying with them several wounded team members and hurrying as fast as they could towards the Processing main gates. Lanz didn’t hesitate. He ran towards the team, went through the main gates, and found the first wounded man that he could reach.

A quick assessment told Lanz that the man had been shot. Lanz could see that he had a glassy look on his face, and by the color of his skin, he was most likely in shock.

“I’m a medic,” he told the Corps member that was carrying his wounded teammate. “We need to get this man on the ground.”

They cleared a spot on the floor of the domed chamber and Lanz immediately went to work. He found the gunshot wound in the upper leg. It had missed the artery by only a few inches, but it was still gushing blood. Lanz guessed the man had already lost a lot of blood. Before Lanz had to ask a first aid kit was in his hands. He opened it to find some gauze and tape and he tore enough gauze to tie off a tourniquet, which he expertly wrapped around the man’s leg. Then he raised the man’s legs off the ground so that he wouldn’t go into shock, and searched the kit for anything else – like morphine. But the kit was bare bones.

Lanz took off his shirt and started to apply pressure to the wound. He looked at the Corps member next to him and said, “Keep up the pressure and keep him warm.”

Lanz looked to the other wounded and saw that the other Corps members were already getting their wounded men and women on the ground and following the procedure Lanz had laid out. Lanz turned to look around to see what other help was on the way, but was surprised to see that he was the only one here. He quickly moved to the second patient and started working on her.

She had a neck wound. It looked pretty severe. Lanz took some gauze and held it over the wound to stop up the flow of blood. While he did that, he checked out the rest of her body for other wounds and discovered that she probably had a few broken ribs, but the gun shot was the most serious wound.

“Hold this!” Lanz said to the nearest guy. As soon as he felt a hand take over the pressure, he moved to the third patient, scanning the crowd for help as he went, but not seeing anyone coming.

The third patient had a broken leg. Lanz set it quickly, and explained to the Corps member next to him how to make a splint. He moved off to the final patient, but before he got there, he heard someone from the crowd say angrily, “Who’s the medic?”

Lanz turned around to see a bunch of doctors and nurses dressed in professional gear looking angrily at the scene in front of them. Someone from the crowd pointed to Lanz and Lanz stopped where he was.

As the rest of the team of doctors and nurses spread out amongst the patients, the head doctor came right towards Lanz. To Lanz’s great surprise, the doctor was livid.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the doctor asked. “Who told you that you were a medic?”

“I was saving these men’s lives, no thanks to you,” Lanz snapped. “And as to who told me I was a medic, it was the United States Army, thank you very much!”

The doctor was so angry, he became speechless. He tried to utter a coherent reply, but couldn’t get a word out. He looked around the scene of dead and wounded and then back at Lanz before he managed to gain control of his voice again.

“This is not how things are done, Army,” he said. “Get the hell out of here before I have you deported!”

Now it was Lanz’s turn to be angry, but before he could reply, he felt a strong hand on his shoulder guiding him away from the scene and back towards the Corps Processing area.

“Deported?” Lanz managed. “Who does he think he is?”

“He is the head surgeon at City Hospital, Franco.”

Lanz turned around and saw that the hand on his shoulder was none other than Nurse Terry’s.

“But…” Lanz said… then his voice trailed off.

“Report to my office before rounds on Monday morning, Mr. Franco,” Terry said coolly, and then Terry turned around and headed back to the other doctors and nurses.

By Monday, Lanz still hadn’t found groceries, but he had found a Chinese take-out place that delivered for free, so he hadn’t starved. He discovered that the phone system worked fine, if you knew the number of the person you were trying to call – which Lanz didn’t. And as for thrilling things to do, Lanz had moped all weekend, going over the scene at the Processing Center in his mind again and again. He had a hundred arguments for why he had acted correctly, but had a sneaking suspicion that none of them were going to matter.

He arrived at Terry’s office ten minutes before Terry arrived. Terry didn’t say a word as he let Lanz into his office and shut the door behind them both. Then Terry took a seat behind his desk and crossed his fingers in front of his face.

“Have you considered another career, Mr. Franco?”

Lanz was immediately on his toes.

“No,” Lanz answered quickly. “I’ve wanted to be a doctor for a long time.”

“Well, after that little stunt you pulled on Saturday, I’m afraid your chances of ever becoming a doctor are very slim.”

Terry hadn’t pulled his punches and Lanz felt like someone had knuckle-punched him in the gut. He fought for air.

“What did I do wrong?” Lanz asked weakly.

“First, you announced yourself as a medic. You’re not a medic. Not yet. And never in this City, I’m afraid. Second, you dispensed medical aide as if you were a medic…”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Not that I can tell,” Terry noted. “But that’s beside the point. You see, medical services are one of the few services in the City where everyone gets the latest medical care. That means our doctors and nurses are selected and trained with techniques far in advance of your own era’s knowledge base. Your medicine is from the 1990’s. Their medicine is much more recent. So, by the mere fact that you were practicing medicine, you were stripping those poor Corps members of their rights. You were giving them inferior medical service.”

“That’s crazy,” Lanz muttered.

“Not if you’re the one receiving medical care,” Terry replied. “If one of those patients had died, you could have been charged with murder. As it is, since you’re new here and really didn’t know better, I have been tasked with reassigning you.”

“Reassigning me?”

“I’m sure something appropriate can be worked out. But for now, I’m going to assign you to the janitorial department. You’ll do that full time from now on until I can get you a better job.”

“I’m a janitor now?”

“There are no menial jobs here, Mr. Franco,” Terry noted. “Everyone works for their food.”

“Is there any chance that…”

“No. Now… if you’ll please show yourself out… I have to give the new guys their assignments.”

So Lanz became a janitor. He swept, mopped, emptied the trash, and tried to pretend that he wasn’t already planning to leave that very night. Without a job in the medical field, there was really no point in staying in the City. He could go back to the real world, start back into school, and finish up his degree there without anyone ever knowing about his failed attempt to perform medicine in some imaginary city out of time.

He was so preoccupied with his plans to leave the City that he didn’t notice the old lady until he bumped into her. Lanz apologized immediately and asked the woman if she was okay, but when she looked at Lanz, she was smiling, and Lanz instantly recognized her.

“Miss Earhart,” Lanz said. “I’m really sorry. I was lost in thought.”

“It happens,” she replied. “So, Lanz, tell me… how are you settling in?”

Lanz hesitated. She had gone out of her way to greet him when he had arrived. Lanz still wasn’t sure what that was all about.

“I’m not,” Lanz admitted. “I’m actually considering leaving.”

“Nonsense,” she snapped. “You just got here. Why would you want to leave?”

In answer, Lanz waved his hands over his filthy janitor’s outfit. Amelia laughed.

“Well, that’s a good enough reason, I suppose,” she noted. “But have you ever considered doing something different? Perhaps a career change is what you need?”

“No, Miss Earhart. I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. I really can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“But, my dear boy, you seem so ill-suited to this line of work,” Amelia replied. “Do you know what I do here?”

Lanz shook his head.

“I’m a Guardian,” she explained. “My entire job is to look after this City and make sure it remains standing for as long as I’m alive. Now, look at me, do I look like the stuffy curator of a living museum? No. I’m a pilot, Lanz, and a damn good one. But do you see any planes around here? Hence, the career change. Sometimes, when you can’t do the thing that you most want to do, fate has a way of dropping you in the path of the thing you were meant to do.”

Amelia patted Lanz’s hand and said, “You think about that, okay.”

Lanz did think about it, for most of the rest of the day, but by closing time he was no less determined to leave the City for good. Absolutely nothing about the City excited him like the idea of being a doctor. If he couldn’t be a doctor here, he’d be a doctor somewhere else.

There was, however, one thing he had to do before he left the City. After changing into his regular clothes, Lanz walked from City Hospital over to Corps HQ and asked around for his brother.

Seth came out of a debriefing looking a little beat and torn up. He seemed pleased to see Lanz, but Lanz could tell that he’d been through a rough day. Lanz suggested that they could both use a drink and Seth agreed that it was probably a good idea.

Seth took him to a nearby bar that was frequented by Corps members. It was called the H.G. Wells and it was a faux English pub. The place was packed. As they waited at the bar for some beer, Celeste waived them over to her booth. Lanz and Seth picked up pints of Bass Ale and joined her.

“It’s been a while, Lanz,” Celeste noted. “What have you been up to?”

“It’s been a rough week,” Lanz admitted.

“Oh, really, how so?” asked Seth sarcastically. It was clear that Seth had something on his mind.

Lanz deferred, however, and asked, “Something happen to you Seth?”

“One of our teams was ambushed the other day,” Celeste explained quickly.

“Yeah… I know,” Lanz replied.

Seth looked up, “You know?”

“I was looking for you guys when they brought the team in,” Lanz explained. “There was nobody there and they needed medical attention so I went to help.”

Seth nearly laughed. “That was YOU?”

“Yeah,” Lanz said bitterly. “That was me.”

“Colonel Field was talking about how you rushed in and helped his guys out and then how the Head Doctor, who’s kind of an ass, chewed you out,” Seth said, his mood greatly lifted. “But nobody knew who the mystery medic was. They really liked the way you told him, ‘I’m from the Army, OOH RAH!’”

Lanz thought about correcting his brother, but let it slide.

“Getting the Head Doctor angry can’t have been good,” Celeste commented.

“No,” Lanz said. “In fact, he fired me.”

“He can’t fire you,” Seth said. “You were just trying to save someone’s life.”

“Not only can he fire me,” Lanz snapped. “But he can prevent me from ever being a doctor in this City.”

“Oh Lanz… I’m so sorry,” Celeste said.

“What an idiot,” Seth replied. “Here we are, getting shot up on our missions, and he’s getting rid of perfectly qualified medics.”

“Yeah… but that’s sort of why I came to find you guys… I…wait… You were getting shot at? I thought these Corps missions were relatively safe?”

“Normally our missions are non-combat missions, brother, unless we, you know, go into a combat zone. But even then, we try really hard not to get into combat with anyone. We go in. We retrieve. We get the hell out. No muss, no fuss.” Seth explained. “But after one of our teams got ambushed, we had to find out why. So our team went out today with three other teams to find out what was going on… and we got jumped as well.”

“We didn’t see them coming,” Celeste agreed. “But they knew we were going to be there.”

“How does anyone know you’re coming?” Lanz asked. “You were traveling in time. You could come at any moment.”

“Exactly,” said Seth. “That means that whoever ambushed our teams was a time traveler as well. So you can see why we’re all in a pretty sour mood today.”

“We lost three members,” Celeste noted. “Perez, Cho, and our medic…”

“It was a hard day. They were the first three men our unit has ever lost.”

Lanz drank deeply from his beer. His plans to leave suddenly seemed so petty. Could he tough it out as a janitor?

No, what was he thinking? He hadn’t gone to school and joined the Army and received all that education and training to throw it all away so that he could clean floors and empty trash cans. But, then again… could he really leave Seth in danger again?

“You have medics on your teams?” Lanz asked.

“Not every team does,” Celeste noted. “We usually only take them with us into dangerous situations – which is pretty rare. One of the teams that did have a medic was ours.”

“I was going to leave,” Lanz said after another sip of his beer.

“Lightweight,” Seth replied. “Not even one beer and you’re calling it a night?”

“No,” Lanz explained. “I meant the City. The only chance I have of becoming a doctor now is to leave the City and go back to my old life.”

Seth coughed in his beer.

“What? No. Bad idea, Lanz… bad idea.”

“That’s why I’ve changed my mind.” Lanz said.

“Good, Lanz. You don’t know what it took for me to get you here in the first place. I’d hate to have you leave again… so soon…”

Seth looked up at Lanz and Lanz nodded his understanding of Seth’s mostly unspoken words. A goofy grin spread across Seth’s face.

“That’s why I’ve decided to stay here and join the Corps as a medic.”

Seth’s grin disappeared.

Celeste noted. “There’s an opening.”

“No, no, no, bad idea, Lanz. The body isn’t even cold,” Seth noted. “Besides, you hate all that adventure stuff. The Corps will be all wrong for you.”

Celeste looked at Lanz and said, “I think you would be perfect in the Corps.”

Lanz Franco didn’t need to hear another word. Though Seth spent the rest of the night, and quite a few beers, trying to convince Lanz otherwise, the next day he walked over to the Indoctrination building, went past all of the secretaries and others, down the stairs, down the halls, and right into the office of his Job Coordinator.

Jack Stiles looked up as Lanz walked in.

“Yes?”

“I want to join the Retrieval Corps.”

Stiles smiled and said, “Class starts on Monday. I have the paperwork right here.”