Today was just not his day, Jaime decided, skipping the stairs by two. The hospital elevators were broken (which he saw as a serious problem) and almost slammed into the wall as he skidded onto the platform that was marked for the third floor. He opened the door and into the glossy hallway. Doctors clotted the hallway and nurses ran from room to room. He counted off the doors until he found the right one.

"Milagro, how you feeling?"

"Perfecto, it's just a broken femur, I'm fine," Milagro reassured him, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear. She held up the clunky dull pink cast. "You get to sign first."

He grinned and pulled a black sharpie from the depths of his backpack and pulled the cap off with his teeth. "Want me to just put my name?"

"Whatever you like," Milagro said, then her face suddenly screwed in concentration. "But don't take up too much room, and no dicks."

Jaime nodded in understanding and wrote his name in a quick, sharp scribble. She examined it before deciding it wasn't hideous and tucked the sharpie into her pocket. "So what happened?"

"I fell," Milagro said, staring at the cast angrily. If she could have, the cast probably would have been melting, she was staring so hard.

He sneezed, wiped his nose with a kleenex and told her that it was bullshit. "You think I'm gonna believe that? Since Papí passed away... I know it's been hard, but they're just asshole kids."

Milagro shrugged, staring at the cast. "I just wanna go home, Jaime."

"Alright, I'm gonna keep the shop open for a couple more hours since I had to close it to grab you. Think you'll be okay up in the house by yourself?"

Milagro rolled her eyes.

Fixing cars, in his honest opinion, wasn't that bad. It was dealing with the stupid-ass people who owned the cars that were puzzling. When he agreed to fix the brakes on a man's truck for a fixed price, the man agreed. However, after all of it was said and done the man only wanted to pay half the price because it wasn't that big of a hassle.

Eventually they agreed on 3/4 of the price and he sat in the dingy garage with the jack raising the next car he desperately needed to work on.

"Hey," Milagro's voice said, and he jumped from where he was cleaning his hands on an old washrag. She put a grilled cheese on one of the fairly clean tables. "I figured you should eat."

"Thanks, but I need to work," He said, bending down. How people managed to fuck up their cars this bad amazed him.

"I could bring you out some ice cream?" She asked, uncertain and he laughed, putting aside his tools. "Alright. I'll finish up the car in the morning while you're at school."

"Do I have to go to school?" She asked, and when he raised an eyebrow she held up the cast. "I mean, I am disabled."

"You'll have to catch up on work," He reminded her and she nodded in understanding before he even finished.

"Yeah, Jaime, I know. But I don't think I could write that well right now, anyways." She said, stiffly waving her casted arm.

"Whatever but if the school doesn't buy your excuse-"

"They will, no worries," Milagro promised, disappearing back inside the house ajoining the garage he was working in. He eyed the previously forgotten grilled cheese and began to devour it without a second thought.

Early the next morning, he found himself being awakened by the annoyingly high pitched voice of his cell phone, and he pulled himself from under his covers and grasped for the stupid fucking object.

"Yea?" He asked, and he has the sudden thought of ohgodtheymight be a costumer and not just Bart prank calling him.

"Hi, uhm, my car isn't working."

Okay, costumer. "Could you describe to me some of the things that it's doing? Smoke under the hood-"

"It won't even start. It just makes this awful noise whenever I put the keys in the ignition and try to get it going."

Oh god, he hoped this wasn't going to be an out-of-garage job. "Are you flooding it?"

"No?"

He took a very deep breath. "Do you know what flooding is?"

There was a long pause. Maybe she was googling it. "Listen- can you just come look at my car? I can pay up front if that's the problem-"

"No, just, I need your address, name, and a call-back number," He said, grabbing for a notebook he kept clients in. He flipped it open to a blank page and uncapped it with his teeth. "Go."

"Uhm- alright, The Sunnyshores Apartments, apartment three-thirty-"

He whistled. Those apartments were definitely more upscale compared to the ones like Lakeside that seemed to always be having drug busts and headlines of rape. "Sorry, uh, your name?"

"Cassandra Sandsmark."

He jotted down the name- phonetically and hoped it was right, waiting patiently for her to list off the digits to her phone number.

"Four-two-nine-nine-oh-nine-seven," She listed and he quickly wrote them.

"Alright, I'll be around at two thirty to check out your car," He said, stuffing a pillow over his head to go back to sleep.

"Thank you!" She said chipperly and the line fell flat.