Ambulance 319

Only Drew could drive bus 319, but in his hands it was indestructible. The ambulance was 14 years old, well into what Motor Pool considered two lifetimes, but as long as Drew was driving it, it hadn't missed a day of work in seven years.

Nobody else could start it. Other drivers tried and failed. Equipment Defect Reports were generated. Motor Pool took the bus and they couldn't start it either, so after a brief diagnostic check they replaced the starter with one from a wreck. The last screw was tightening as Drew walked in for shift; he took the keys from the board and drove it out of the garage with Motor Pool running behind him. They needed the odometer mileage to put the bus back in service.

Drew gave it to them over the radio: 140,236. Impossible, Motor Pool replied, that's what it was at the beginning of the month. And come to think of it, that's what last month's statement said, too. Was Drew sure he was reading the odometer when he filled out his reports?

Motor Pool was right, because Drew hadn't been reading the odometer before he filled out his reports, but Drew was right, too, because the odometer hadn't worked since the day That Kid, in spite of Protocol 0, had died in the back of the bus. 140,236. Drew didn't mind a non-functional odometer as long as everything else worked, so he never filed an EDR for it, and as no one else could ever drive the bus, they didn't, either.

"Besides," Drew confided in Ian as they wandered down Bleeker street one afternoon after work, "I think if they fixed the odometer the bus would start breaking down again. It would be putting on miles."

Ian couldn't but agree, since in the seven years since the odometer had stopped Drew had never had to file an EDR on bus 319.

Billing, however, was furious. If the odometer never changed they couldn't charge patients for miles transported. They memoed Motor Pool and demanded that the odometer be fixed for the financial well-being of the system.

Did Billing know what it costed to replace an odometer, Motor Pool asked. Minimum two and a half hours labor because the entire dashboard had to be disassembled, plus the cost of the odometer, the cable, and the sensor. And with a bus that old, they'd have to special order the part. Besides, if the odometer was broken, there'd be an EDR on file. Was Billing sure they were reading their records before filling out their memos?

Actually, an EDR had been filed. For the sake of professional conscience, Drew had filed one. He had taken the form from the pile of blanks, dutifully filled in all of the boxes, walked down to Motor Pool and hand delivered it to their office wastebasket.

Halfway down the hall he had suddenly felt guilty. "Do you have a shredder?" he asked Motor Pool's secretary as he fished his EDR from the trash. The secretary held out her hand and Drew handed her the report. As the sound of electric motor followed Drew back down the hall he smiled to himself. If Motor Pool had misfiled his paperwork, he couldn't be held responsible.