OMG it’s been kind of a hellish month for me, work-wise. But a savoor has come, and relief may be on the horizon!
I’ll try to sum up…
I work for an ambulance company as a paramedic, and not a hospital. This way, I cover more ground and can theoretically help more people. About a year ago, we got a new supervisor, who was quickly nicknamed Herr Ziegler, because his entire mannerisms and demeanor are very harsh.
Due to his attitude, a lot of people have quit, moving to other companies or some of the hospitals, leaving us understaffed and overworked, and it’s only been getting worse. Recently, things came to a head, where I got assigned a double (16 hour shifts) three days in a row.
That’s barely time to get any decent sleep, much less also grab a bite. Forget errands! Thank god for automatic bill pay, too.
In order to get into how that happened, I need to backtrack. Earlier in the month, Kyle and I had answered a call, to find the victim of a hit and run. He wasn’t breathing, and I was unable to find a pulse. After working on him for a bit, we carted him into the ambulance while I continued to work on him, due to time being precious and a large crowd having formed. It was at the mark of desperation that he came to, and pleaded to not go to the hospital, that he needed to get home to his daughter.
In order to keep him talking so that he’d stay conscious, I got him to talking about his daughter (a nine year old by the name of Emily), and promised him that I’d try to pull some strings with the attending physician at the ER to get him out of there quickly and home to his little girl – didn’t think anything else of it.
The following day Kyle and I met up at José’s taco truck to grab some food and people watch. Kyle and I are talking and I hear a familiar voice behind me – it’s the guy from the night before, Liam. Here’s there with his daughter Emily, and we invite them to sit with us for the remainder of our lunch – he even pays, as a way to say thank you. From there we head to an awesome ice cream place I know of, then to the park. Emily and I are getting along great, and she seems to keep trying to hook me up with her dad.
Not that I’m opposed to the idea of seeing if Liam and I are compatible – even if he is older, he’s nice, good-looking, nice sense of humor and being well-off doesn’t hurt either, though that last bit makes me sound horrible, and I’m not.
After a while he determined it was time for her to head home and do her homework, since she’d had a skip day to spend time with her father. He then invited us over later that evening for dinner. So in the meantime, because both my mother and grandmother have instilled in me a sense of ‘always take something when invited as a guest’ mentality, I baked an apple pie and some chocolate chip cookies, making sure to make extra for Kyle.
Dinner was amazing – szechuan chicken, among other delicacies. Liam put what looked like a lot of effort into making a nice dinner for us, so I’m happy I brought the desserts. After dinner, Kyle and Emily ran off to give each other makeovers, while I helped Liam clean up afterward and he gave me a tour of his home. Met back up with Emily and Kyle after, had dessert and then called it a night.
A few days later, Liam drops by the company I work for, bringing in enough food for everyone working to have some in between calls and various duties. Herr Ziegler and his sixth sense for no one working constantly butted in and he put up a stink about it, basically told Liam we weren’t allowed to accept gifts and to get the hell out. Liam had a word or two and did leave.
Boss man turns to me and asks if that was my call from the other night and if I had known about this ahead of time, to which I had responded yes and then no, respectively. An on-the-spot schedule adjustment led to me working my three doubles in a row, and everyone knows it was a thinly disguised punishment for a nice gesture by a grateful man.
Cue a couple weeks later, I text Liam from work, asking if he’d like to stop out for coffee tomorrow, just to hang out. Kyle is reading over my shoulder parts of my conversation, and only catches me responding to Liam that “if you can pull that off, I owe you a date, or a kiss, or baking for a month or something” to which he just stood and stared, open-mouthed at me. So I filled him in on what he was missing – that Liam thinks things will be changing around the workplace soon, for the better.
Kyle mocks me for wanting to date him, and I tell him it’s not a date, just a get together for coffee and chat – but still don’t bug me the next day. He agrees, provided I give details.
I end up oversleeping, so only have enough time to shower and dress before meeting him – no time to eat. Meet him, order a coffee and something small to eat and we talk. Ask about Emily, and it turns out she’s sick – I offer to take a look at her, so he can know for sure if she needs to get in to a doctor. I almost offered to take the time out to do so while he was working, just so he didn’t have to worry about it.
We agree for me to come by the next day to take a look at Emily, and then we talk some more – this is when I learn that via a chain of friends, he has managed to speak directly to Herr Ziegler’s boss’ boss about him – he really will be replaced! I cannot tell you how ecstatic I am over this. Moving on, when he realizes I haven’t eaten, he apologizes to me – me! when I asked him out to coffee. I told him as much, and he asked me what kind of food I might want, and we end up at a Panda Express because I wanted Chinese.
As for what to do next, he asks me what I would like to do, so I ask him if he dances. He doesn’t, so I suggested karaoke, because it was all I could think of, then quickly add that he must choose one or the other, and he settles on karaoke. We head to a bar, and both of us do a song, embarrassing ourselves but having a laugh. I find out that Kyle and Emily both have been texting him, giving him advice about how to handle the date with me. We agree it’s a “no-date”, and try to figure out what to do to make sure there is no danger of it turning into a date, when he suddenly asks if I know where Kyle lives.
The idea now is to grab snacks and movies and invade Kyle’s place. Hit the store, grab the aforementioned items (a loooooot of movies), a large stuffed bunny, and two houseplants (bamboo and aloe vera) and head over to Kyle’s, without warning him ahead of time. The three of us settle down to watch Stardust (after an initial embarrassment on Kyle’s part, who answered the door in a bathrobe) before calling it an evening.
I walk Liam to his car, thank him for a good night, and before I could lose my courage, gave him a kiss on the cheek. What can I say? I had a really nice time. I then hurry to my car before catching his reaction, and came home to write this out before going to bed. I guess I’ll find out his reaction tomorrow, when I drop by to check in on Emily.
‘Til later when I find out his reaction (if any)!