The smell of coffee was a siren's call to Nurse Dixie McCall. It was five in the morning at Rampart Hospital and all was well. ::For now.:: she mused, padding soft shoes down the quiet hallway towards the doctor's lounge. She slipped inside of the door nimbly from the shadows, after carefully looking around for any eye witnesses.

Kel Brackett looked up from the stocks page he was perusing. "Come to raid your boss's pantry? Behold the guardian at the gate." he teased, dragging over the tin of Folder's ground coffee into his arms protectively.

Her cover blown, Dixie plopped down into a chair with her painfully empty white china mug plastered in red roses. "I've got a coin for safe passage, Dr. Charon. See if you can route the River Styx up to the administator's office. He needs to forget a few things pronto." she grumbled.

Her doe eyed face was so frustrated already, that Kel relented and got up to pour her the forbidden brew himself. "Oh? Was there something I missed in last week's departmental briefing?"

"So good. This." she sighed, sipping gratefully."I'll say, Kel. How about the staffing budget for starters? Oshiro's way off in thinking that we can get by on his latest dollar figure per month. I outlined clearly to him last month that we need three more nurses on the floor in the E.R. just to keep up on the weekends. Our surrounding population's boomed. Any a.m. traffic jam getting into work shows him that every day. I don't know how Oshiro can't connect dots as obvious as those."

"He probably flies in." chuckled Kel.

Dixie glared at him. "You're not helping."

Dr. Brackett conmiserated. "It takes time to increase any hospital spending. But it'll get there. They're already building new labs and getting another landing pad by the parking lot."

"Whoop de ding. Now we can get more patients faster and test them for longer.
Look, Kel. I get the whole profits thing. A hospital boils down to being just another business in the long run."

"Yeah, at the mercy of all the pharmaceutical and medical supply manufacturers. What a bandaid costs dictates my salary." he frowned.

"Never thought of it that way." Dixie sighed. "Guess I'm sheltered at being paid hourly. But still, can you rattle the Underworld upstairs and get me a few more bodies to work with? My overtime budget'll thank you instantly."

"You guys have a budget cap?"

"Oh, yeah, Mr. Yearly-Salaried-In-The-Stratosphere. And it's even tighter than the E.R.'s equipment purchasing cap."

"How low?"

"We can hand out six dollars an hour for a brand new nurse fresh out of RN school."

"Ouch! That's insane!" Brackett yelled.

"See what I have to work with just to make a living?" McCall smirked.

"Now I see why you snuck in here for a lake of java. To drown out all your misery."
Brackett sighed, mulling over the problem. "Tell you what, I'll gather the other doctors together and we'll see what we can do. Now I'm not proposing you nurses go on strike or anything. It's far too soon for that, Dix. What I mean is maybe we physicians can set up a scholarship fund, to pay for fresh nursing graduates."

"That's a nice idea. But that'll take months to implement, Kel. And we've got the whole summer coming ahead of us." McCall said.

"The busy season." Kel grimaced.

"Yep." Dixie said, gulping down a huge mouthful of steamy fortification.

"Hmmm." he mulled. Then he snapped his fingers. "I got it! How about using mutual aid? Don't we have some sort of state program where we can activate staff on calls between hospitals based on immediate arriving case numbers?"

McCall's mouth flopped open in discovery. "We do! Oh, Kel. I completely forgot about that. That loophole may be the answer to everything! For this morning and for every other morning that'll roll in afterwards. Thank you so much for that alternative angle.. I'll get right on it." and she shot out the door, abandoning her empty coffee cup.

"Your welc-" Kel broke off, grinning in amusement as the door shut behind her.

He studied her mug, which was still curling up steam, with a smile.

Johnny Gage was on the payphone, calling around desperately. "Look, operator.
Don't hang up.. I'm on my last d-" *click* And the phone went dead.
"Oh, for crying out loud! I'm just trying to find my wallet." he hissed, slamming the phone receiver back onto its cradle.

"Easy on fire department equipment, Gage. We've got a limited budget."

"Ma Bell owns this, Cap. Not us." Johnny told him. He ambled over to where the rest of the gang was happily chowing down breakfast eggs and bacon. "Where's the toast?"

"In the frig. Toaster's broken." Mike Stoker shared. He held out his hand. "Got a few dimes to contribute to the cause?"

"I'm fresh out." Johnny glared. "Didn't you see me over there?"

"Did you check your floorboards in the car?" Hank asked. "When I drop a wallet,
that's where it goes most often."

"I wasn't that lucky." Gage moped, sinking into a chair and staring at his scrambled sunny sides going cold on his plate. "It's gone. And a million places where I've been last night to check out."

"We can always ask around in between runs." Roy DeSoto suggested.

"Yeah, I guess we can do that. It's not like I had a ton of cash on me. But it was grocery money for a week. I think I'm in for a bit of starving myself at home."

The rest of the gang didn't hesitate. They all reached into their wallets and started pulling out dollar bills and fives to lay on the table in front of Johnny.

"Eat. We've got your back. That's the beauty of the fire department." Cap told him. "Pay us back later. But hurry. You've got three seconds to shovel it in."

"What? Why three-"

EEEoooOOOWWWWWwwwww. The tones wailed from the overhead speaker.

"See?" Chet shrugged. "At least that karma's still working for ya." he laughed,
sucking in his last gooey egg skillfully from his plate like tea from a saucer.
"Let's go, Johnny. That one's for all of us."