Chapter 12
Johnny looked over at Julie and started to blush. "A personal receptacle?"
An equally red faced Julie sat back down on the edge of the queen sized bed and pulled a box out from under the bed. In it were half a dozen or more urinals still in their plastic wrappers.
John looked over the contents of the box thoroughly; he even moved a few of the packages around to get a complete look at what was in the box. He then looked at the lack of privacy in the sleeper unit and started to blush before he looked at Julie.
"What about you, none of these are for a woman."
"It's a good thing I went before we left then, isn't it." Julie blushed herself in return.
John thought for a moment of the six hour ride ahead of them and wished he'd gone before they left.
As they rode John and Julie took turns checking on Roy and keeping a running conversation going with Dr. Frick. They were all aware of the constant chatter going on in the cab of the tractor and even though they couldn't hear all that was being said, John and Roy were surprised that this man named Jack was doing most of the talking.
Roy remained calm and slightly groggy but slept very little as they rode along. Finally an hour into the trip Roy called for Johnny to get his attention and then asked if he'd be his personal in flight steward. It took John a moment to understand and then he quickly pulled the box out from under the bottom bed and gabbed one of the unopened packages. Julie quickly understood what was going on and turned her head to give the best amount of privacy she could to the situation.
As goes with the power of suggestion and the sound of dripping fluids, once Roy was done and judging by how full he filled the urinal he had been holding it for a while, Dr. Frick also requested his personal receptacle and was able to take care of business under the covers.
Julie managed to chart the volume deposited and then poured the contents of the personal receptacles in to a funnel affair in the corner by the door. It was explained that there was a tank under the sleeper section where it was stored and would be dumped with the animal waste at the end of the run. Seeing the funnel where the contents were being dumped Johnny managed to let it be known that he needed some privacy and managed to empty his bladder directly into the funnel while Julie slipped up between Chet and Jack to see how they were coming along.
"How's it going up here?" Julie asked as she sat on the console in the cab. "Are you two boys getting along with each other."
"Yeah, your cousin has been entertaining me with stories about truck driving. Too bad it's mostly BS," Chet commented with a smile.
"BS, What do you mean BS." Jack was clearly just pretending to be offended.
"Anyone who talks that much has to throw in some BS otherwise they'd run out of material. I ought to know, in my world I'm usually the one spouting all the BS." Chet continued to smile.
Both men laughed and then Jack turned serious, or at least as serious as he could possibly turn. "Using these back roads, we're going to miss the port of entry station on the state line but it'll be hard to get away from having to stop at one when we get to the California state line."
"That's okay, we have all the paperwork we need for our end of things," Julie reported. "I would appreciate a twenty minute warning before we get there though. We'll need to make sure we have IV's changed and all meds given before we get there since we won't be able to administer anything from the state line until we get to the LA County line. Didn't you tell me that would be two hours from the state line?"
"It will be if we cross at Vegas." Jack started to look worried. "How is everything going back there by the way?"
"So far so good, just keep trucking," Julie responded as she noticed John move back into view. "Just keep on trucking."
Julie had just checked Dr. Frick's vitals when Jack announced, "Here's where we start shaving time off this trip."
"I don't think this is a good area to start speeding up. This road looks like it has a lot of twists and turns in it," Chet offered his concerned opinion.
"Oh, I don't intend to speed. The cops around these parts don't take to kindly to that sort of thing."
"If you're not going to increase your speed then how do you intend to shave time off the trip?" Chet asked while giving the patients and his friends in the back a quick glance. His first thought was that Jack was going to take off over some poorly paved dirt road short cut and he feared how Roy would handle a rough ride in his condition.
"You see all those turns and curves in the road?" Jack pointed ahead of them as he drove.
"Yeah," Chet responded with a puzzled look that just seemed to fuel Jack all the more.
"Well, I just straighten 'em out. Now a real trucker like myself doesn't waste time turning. There're some I know that the only time they're on a road like that one up ahead of us is when they're crossing it. See here." Jack pulled in to the first curve by hugging real close to the left hand line even crossing a lane of traffic to get there.
"You just keep her on the straight and narrow and I just shaved a good twenty feet and at least four whole seconds off the length of this trip. And there's still more curves ahead to shave that much more off."
John, hearing what was being talked about, stuck his head into the cab section and asked in partial terror, "What about oncoming traffic?"
"Well now, there's not much to worry about there," Jack rattled on as a new style compact car was seen coming around a blind curve traveling in the opposite direction.
"Why something like that will hardly be noticed, we'll all just think it's a bump in the road."
John continued to watch as Jack did indeed do his best to straighten out the road and even though he mostly stayed in his lane it was a whole lot closer than John felt comfortable to the oncoming lane. The next car that came from the opposite direction was a one ton pickup with a rack on the bed, hauling a couple of steers.
"Now if something like that were to get in our way I'd have to holler back real fast and you all'd need to pick your feet up back there to be on the safe side."
Next around the mountain side were three semi's hauling hay, "Now something like that and we'd all be in a bit of trouble but we wouldn't feel it for long." Jack continued to talk and Julie just sat on the edge of the bed in the back giggling. Chet started to join in having noticed that Jack was staying within his lane but it was the look on John's face that was the most hilarious look he'd seen from him in a long time.
John had finally decided he would be better off just not looking and ducked back into the sleeper section to see Julie pulling the covers around Dr. Frick while he slept comfortably on the lower bunk. Just as John was doing the same to his partner who had drifted off on the upper bunk he felt a bump and rumble in the truck.
"What was that?" John asked in a panic thinking of a small car going under the tires of the eighteen wheeler he was riding in.
Jack responded by pulling the mic to his CB Radio next to his mouth. "This is Lazy J Trucking calling Smokey Jones. Can you hear me, Smokey Jones?"
"Hi there, Lazy J. I hear you're doing ambulance service on this trip. You need a police escort to the border?"
"That's a big negitory Smokey Jones; you'd just slow me down. I'm just calling to report some fresh venison on the side of the road at mile marker 84 or there abouts. The brains are well ground under the tires but the meat should be good, save me a few porterhouses will you."
"Now you know I can't do that. So tell me, did you hit it?"
"That's another big negitory there Smokey Jones, I even got witnesses, as I see it he hit me. No damage that won't wash away in the first puddle I drive trough though so I don't plan to press charges. Pretty sure he'll never do that again."
Chet just covered his face with his hand and shook his head before sticking his head around the corner into the sleeper section of the tractor. "And you think I'm bad."
John and Julie worked together to keep their patients comfortable. Julie did stick her head into the cab once or twice to ask if the Martins were still following behind them but other than that John thought is best to tune any talk coming from the cab out the best he could.
Roy was wakened every two hours to make sure he still knew who and where he was and most of the time he was awake and responded quickly with the information he knew would be asked before asking if they were there yet.
At one point Roy did roll over and fall asleep only to wake up at the first bump in the road and panic slightly because he had his back to the open section of the sleeper and his first feelings were that he was in a coffin.
It was Julie that heard him crying that he wasn't dead yet and stood on the bottom bunk to gently wake him and encourage him to roll over so he didn't feel so closed in. Dr. Frick invited him to come down and share his lower bed but once Roy settled down he was sure he would be fine where he was.
"Did you guys visit Frisco?" Julie asked John once she got Roy calmed down and he started to doze again.
"I'm not sure, I don't think so. What or who's Frisco?" John asked.
"It's a ghost town not far from my father's ranch. It was built around an old silver mine while it was in peak production, and from what I hear, in its heyday the town was as lawless as they come. A lot of money came out of that mine but it was usually lost the same night, either at the poker tables or at the point of a gun. The miners ran in to a big fault line and this large vein of silver they were mining came to a halt. It wasn't long after that that any house or building that could be moved was moved on to the next town or left in ruins trying. Then there was a lot of grave robbing that took place, mostly for the gold filings left in the teeth of the corpses or any jewelry they might have been buried with. If you go there today you can see the old wooden caskets that have been dug up and left open. Some of them have claw marks on the lids, presumably from people that were buried a little faster than they should have been."
"No we didn't stop there, nor do I think I want to," John responded feeling slightly horrified at the thought. "You're kidding right?"
"Well there are some who claim the claw marks on the casket lids were left by wolves tearing the unearthed remains apart. But yeah, it's part of our local history."
"Considering Roy's nightmare I can see why you asked if we stopped there but fortunately we didn't."
The trip continued uneventfully, as Julie and John took turns pulling the blankets around their patients and smoothing them out. It almost seemed too soon when Jack sang out that the Nevada port of entry was twenty minutes off. At that announcement Julie checked the medical orders over good and put together fresh IV bottles that would have to last from the state line to the county line where John could then take over treatment under the direction of Dr. Brackett and Dr. Early.
If anything serious was to arise before then, Dr. Frick would be called on to prescribe treatment but since he was one of the patients and his condition was considered serious, it was something Julie wanted to avoid if at all possible. There was also the possibility of stopping at the nearest hospital but the goal was Rampart General.
Julie started watching through the windshield and as they moved into the port of entry station, Julie made short work of changing to fresh bottles of IV fluids and then up dated the patient charts before handing them to Jack as he grabbed his paperwork and climbed down to the ground to greet the inspector walking up to the truck with his clip board.
Chet watched through the rearview mirror as Jack and the inspector met. He watched as the two conversed and Jack handed over his paperwork. Chet snickered at the look on the inspector's face when he shifted his attention from the trucking books to the patient files. Of course the inspector would have to climb up in the cab of the truck and look into the sleeper section to see that there were indeed patients receiving medical treatment on the beds there. Julie was asked to present proof of her certifications but John was subtly waved off from pulling his from his wallet as Julie's were examined. The man then spent a little extra time checking the ear tags on several of the pigs he could get to through the openings of the trailer.
"Okay, this is going to take about ten minutes or more," Julie informed John. "Now would be a good time to go use the pay phone next to the building and give Rampart an update call." As Julie talked to John she wrote down some information on a pad of paper, as to which road they planned to take going into the county and the latest vitals readings. Julie then opened the side door to the sleeper and let him out offering him a hand full of coins from her pocket for the phone call.
John thanked her but then took all that Chet had to offer and was on his way. "Just make sure you don't forget and leave without me," were John's last words before climbing down to the ground and hurrying over to the phone.
"Don't worry, you're a very important cog in the rest of this trip," Julie assured.
Johnny dialed the well remembered phone number to Rampart Emergency and gave the doctor on call the updated information. He was informed that Dr. Bracket and Dr. Early were getting some sleep but planned to be at the hospital when they arrived. John wished he'd been able to talk with them or at least Dixie, but he understood. Still to be worked out was how they were going to make contact once they were past the county line.
All this time there was a station wagon parked behind them with substantial luggage tied to the top and three kids in the back seat. Sitting in a reclined front seat was a very pregnant woman, and behind the wheel was her anxious husband.
John was just finishing up on the phone when he saw Jack step up to the open driver's window and talk for a while.
"This is the last stop unless we get into trouble." John heard Jack say to the other driver and he felt glad that they were getting closer to getting home himself.
Author's notes:
I did have a relative who drove a big truck and on one occasion I was given a ride to a place that was on the way to one of his destinations. The conversation about straightening out the road that is found in this chapter is as close to being word for word as I can possibly remember. He's gone now, a few years ago he lost the battle to cancer.
There is also a ghost town not far from my home town named Frisco. All that was written in this chapter is true there too.
Sorry these chapters are taking so long. It's just starting to hit that Mom's not going to be there to cook her out of this world dressing for thanksgiving this year and each day I think of one more thing I'm going to miss now that she's not with us. Those thoughts and trying to get Dad to join us for Thanksgiving instead of just going to a restaurant are interfering with my writing muse. I wish I could promise it's going to get better soon but right now I'm not able to do so. I will say that there are only a few more chapters left. Thank you so much for being there for me and for letting me indulge in this escape at this time in my life and for the moral support you've all offered along the way.