GLOSSARY
The two days off passed in a blur. Ian returned to work with the feeling that if Sam hadn't been in there would have been open battle. He leaned his forehead against the glass of the driver's door and closed his eyes to block out his headache. Then he opened the door and climbed in.
Marcus had the paper spread open on the dashboard. Almost all of the dashboard - certainly more than just his half of it. Ian pulled his door shut and started the ambulance.
On the way down to coffee Ian opened his window for fresh air. Marcus would soon be after him to close it or shut of the A/C; Marcus would have to deal. Ian turned the stereo on, flipped through the presets, turned it off. He pulled back the wiper-washer lever and cleaned the windshield. He pushed in the cigarette lighter and power locked the doors. The clock on the dashboard was a minute slow; Ian reset it.
Traffic was at a near standstill due to utility work at the intersection. Ian fought off the urge to lean on the horn, and turned on the stereo instead, tuning in to a weather report. He drummed his hands on the steering wheel.
It would have taken a far less observant man than Marcus to not have picked up on Ian's mood. Marcus quietly reassembled and folded his newspaper, holding it in both hands and looking complacently out of the windshield.
Ian breathed in and out deeply a few times then shook his head as if clearing cobwebs. "Supposed to be nice all week," he commented on the weather broadcast.
"That's what they say," Marcus replied. Traffic inched forward. What Ian wouldn't give for a Diff Breather now. Anything to turn on the lights and siren and hop onto the sidewalk. The radio and MDT, however, remained stubbornly silent.
Overhead a pigeon circled, landing on the sidewalk beside the ambulance. Ian considered the bird, losing himself in the complexities of its shading, the way its feathers flashed pink and green in the sunlight, the fact that it absolutely had to bob its head to walk. How had they figured that out, he wondered, picturing a scientist squatting over a pigeon, holding its body and neck in rigid formation. No, that wouldn't work, he reasoned, the pigeon would peck at him. Perhaps a neck and body cast? Perhaps a Stiff-neck C-collar? He smiled.
Traffic had pulled up a car length or two, so Ian released the brake and let the bus roll forward. "Anything in the paper?" he asked Marcus.
"Oh, the usual. Now the mayor's cracking down on jaywalkers."
"Really? This is New Gotham. Who does he think he is?"
"He thinks he's the mayor."
Finally, the corner. Ian twisted the steering around until it hissed, slipping the bus onto the cross street and bumping one of the rear wheels over the curb. Somewhere he had read that some off road vehicles had artificial horizons on their dashboards. He wondered what it would cost to install one in the bus.
They took their time climbing out of the ambulance, but eventually made it into the deli. "Mister Marcus, your coffee," Abraham called as they walked in. "Fresh and hot, not milk."
"You look good, Abraham," Marcus replied.
"Not my time yet it was, not yet, but one of these days. Come to it we all do," he handed the coffee across the counter, "Every one, yes."
"I don't think it's your time yet, Abraham. And consider Elijah."
"A chariot of fire, yes, but only he proves the rule. With milk?" he asked Ian.
"Please," Ian answered, not wanting to be rude and still being in too much of a mood to be able to politely decline.
"Here, for you," Abraham handed the cup across.
They paid, they insisted, and Ian bought a newspaper off the rack, then they turned to go. "The Lord bless you and keep you," Marcus called from the door.
"The same may he do for you," Abraham called back. "The same may he do for you."
Outside, the earlier half mist had grown into a thin, drifting rain, the type Erin had called an Irish rain. "He looks good," Ian called across the bus's hood as they unlocked their doors.
Inside Marcus set his coffee on the console to buckle his seatbelt. "He does. The doctors told him very little damage. They t-PA'd him within five minutes of our arrival."
"Wow."
Ian found jazz comforting, as a general rule, and once they were parked again, he dialed up the jazz station on the stereo, flipped through the paper to the crossword, and leaned back into his seat. Andy found jazz comforting, too, and held to the philosophy that if he was going to be stuck somewhere he might as well have it to accompany him. "What do you mean, you can't get jazz down here?" he asked the pale-faced police officer who had climbed down below the R train to reach him and deliver his message. "Get me jazz."
The officer, a rookie, didn't know how to reply. "Get me a CD player, a tape player, I don't care. Jazz. Not blues," he cautioned as the officer crawled backwards from under the subway car, "jazz." He turned back to his patient in mock exasperation, "Some people."
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GLOSSARY
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