X-ray Chapter 5, part 3

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Coffee, post, and Frank buried himself in his copy of the Post. "Nine tenths of the job is putting up with boredom," Ian said to himself quietly.

Frank but down his paper. "What whore?" he asked.

"I said 'nine tenths of this job is boredom,'" Ian said, louder than last time.

Frank looked disappointed. "Oh," he said, "yeah." He picked up his paper again, "and the other half is putting up skells and morons."

Ian ignored Frank's mathematics (he probably wasn't a math major, Ian reflected) but wondered whether the 'skells and morons' referred to him. Certainly his failure to prep his saline lock the day before had not been an act of genius. He felt his panic again, though at a remove, and the sense of relief when he realized that Three Two Boy had delivered him from his predicament. He could not count on that again.

Of course, Ian thought as his mind doubled back, in assuming that Frank wasn't a math major, he was assuming that Frank went to college. "When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me," Ian's brother had said many times, and Ian had to agree that this was sometimes true. "Did you go to college?" He asked the back of Frank's newspaper.

"What?"

"Nothing," Ian said. "I was talking to myself." His heart skipped a beat as their radios crackled, but the call was for another unit. He had to get used to that; he was going to give himself a heart attack if he kept on jumping every time the radio went off. He closed his eyes and leaned back as far as his seat would allow, and try to rela-

"Three-five x-ray, you've got a call," said the radio as the MDT beeped, and Ian's heart skipped again.

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