Must Love Otters (4 page)

“Oh, well, little Joey came around about two years after we were married. Then they were two years apart.”

“A lot of diapers,” Herb says. He sounds closer to the phone.

“Mona, is he trying to get up?”

“Herby, you lie back and wait. We’ll just sit here until the medical people come help. What’s your name again, sweetie?”

“I’m Hollie.”

“Herby, Hollie says you have to lie still. So, Hollie,” she shuffles the phone again, “are you married, dear?”

“No.”

“So no kids.”

“Nope. No kids.”

“Well, you sound young. I’m sure Prince Charming is out there waiting for you …” I laugh. The Disney regurgitation of Prince Charming never included a man with a weird attachment to medical supplies or pocket-sized terriers. I’ll bet Prince Charming never burned Cinderella’s nipples with Sriracha sauce.

“Probably. Yes. Someday, I suppose.”

“You know, you should meet my Daniel. He’s absolutely adorable. And he’s single … He’s in real estate. Makes lots of money. Drives a fancy car.”

I laugh. Mona is trying to set me up with her son while her husband waits for his ride to the hospital. This is a first.

“You know, Hollie, you only get to live this life once. I know that sounds like silly advice from a silly old woman, but don’t waste a second, sweetie. If I could go back and do it all over again, I’d still pick my Herby. It would’ve been nice to have a little girl, but my boys gave me granddaughters. There’s no bigger happiness in this world than your family.”

“Indeed, Mona. You’re so right.” That choky feeling surges in the back of my throat, the one that happens right before tears make an appearance. I am losing my bloody mind.

A siren wails in the background. The radio squawks at me that the EMTs have arrived. “Mona, sounds like my guys are there. Herb is a lucky man to have a wife who loves him as much as you do. You really did well here today.”

“Thank you for all your help, Hollie. Herby, tell Hollie thank you.” He does, his voice a little slow. I hope this is just insulin related and not something more serious.

“You take care, Mona.”

“You too, dear. Thank you again.” She hangs up, even though I don’t want her to. I want to sit here and listen to her talk about dance halls and her son Daniel and her grandbabies and all the silly, romantic things I’m sure Herb did for her, even if he didn’t and I’m romanticizing this invisible couple and their perfect, blissful life with lampshades and couches still covered in plastic and Hummel statues and collector’s spoons in a glass hutch in the dining room.

The screen to my right is black; my reflection stares back at me. I missed some mascara on my cheek, its dark smudge reminding me that I am not whole.

My otter figurine clutches her tiny baby to her chest who in turn clutches her little white clamshell. They smile at me in perpetuity, a constant reminder that they have one another and I have no one. I don’t have a clamshell to hold onto for dear life.

“You only get to live this life once.”
And this is how I’m spending it?

“Hollie?” Patty the supervisor is standing behind me. I turn and find myself eye level with her camel toe. Why this woman wears polyester pants is still a sad mystery I never want to solve but when my chair is lower than it should be and Patty and her sausage-like legs stand next to me … you get the picture.

Oh, but then she leans her butt on the desktop and it groans under her girth. I am fearful for the integrity of the steel structure.

She clicks the redirect button on my console, sending my calls to other dispatchers. Shit. This is going to be about the memo. I know it. Time for my tongue-lashing. And it’s going to be so public. I thought she’d at least take me into her office so I could sink down into the very low chair she has placed in front of her desk. Polyester Patty’s love for her
Intimidation Strategies for Managers 101
book is biblical. She keeps it between her framed, signed pictures of Donald Trump and Dick Cheney.

“Hollie, I need you to join the party-planning committee.”
Oh God no.

“What?” This isn’t the tongue-lashing?

“Candi has been doing it for years, but since you don’t have kids and a husband to take care of [
insert knife plunge here
], I know you have some extra time. Especially now that your night classes are over.”

I was never taking night classes. I said I was because I didn’t want to be forced into helping with the party-planning committee or the annual family picnic committee or the Secret Santa committee or the Sneakers for Shoeless Kids fundraiser. (That’s a terrible name for a charity, by the way.)

“You’ve been here long enough now that you can help with some of the extra responsibilities, right? I mean, we’re like a family, and we don’t want anyone’s birthdays or anniversaries or other special events to go uncelebrated. No one likes to be forgotten.”

I do. I like to be forgotten. In fact, I wish you’d get your large, odd-smelling body away from my console and forget all about me. Oh, and take the disciplinary memo with you.

“Hollie?”

“I … uh …”

“We all need to do our part,” Patty says. She points at the banner above the main door:
Community Builds Integrity.
Les is staring at me from behind his Black Book of Death. Creepy stalker asshole. I don’t know if I want to be a part of his community.

He’s so smug. Probably thinks I’m getting an early pre-memo reaming. What he doesn’t know is if I have to be on this committee, I’ll make sure his birthday is everything it should be.

And more.

But I don’t want to do this. I spent enough time on committees and councils and clubs in high school for two lifetimes. I was an easy target—those goody-goody leader types knew Pleaser Hollie would say yes. “I’m, um, really busy when I’m not working, though, Patty.”

“Doing what? I know you and Keith usually work opposite shifts because he’s on the radio when you’re not here.”

“My … dad. Yeah, he’s been asking me to help out with … stuff. Around his little farm.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Gard-en-ing stuff.” The word comes out too slow. She’s gonna know I’m lying.

“Well, I’m sure spending two nights a month helping with special events in the office won’t damage your green thumb.”

“Yeah … I guess.”

“Excellent.” The desk exhales relief when she stands. “Candi can brief you on upcoming events and give you an idea of what she needs help with.”

“Okay.”

“Good.” She reverses the redirect on my console and picks up the mustard-color memo. “We’ll have to talk about this Monday. I’ve got meetings in the morning, so come see me after lunch, yes? Good.” She leaves no room for my response. Which is fine. Because I have none.

I wait for her to walk away before I zap my console—I need a minute. That crushing feeling, the one where I realize I’ve just consented to do something else I don’t want to do? Its mean, nasty tendrils spiral around my throat.

I could really use some fresh undeodorized air, but I don’t dare try to move past Les.

Hypothetically, if I were to try to escape out the side door for just a few moments of real-life outdoor oxygen free of committees and disciplinary memos and calls from sick, dying, and/or angry people, I would be tersely reminded that my shift doesn’t end for another hour.

Les regards his watch, pushes his glasses back up his oily nose. Answers a call. The way he positions himself in his chair, stiff and serious, means something big is going down on his line. Good. A reprieve from his icky glaring eyeballs. And, of course, he will do everything right. Mustard-colored memos don’t end up on Les’s desk. Even if he does screw up, we’ll never know because the cliques here protect one another.

“Hollie,” Patty’s voice echoes across the dispatch center, accompanied by her waving hand. I stand and obey, like a good community-minded servant. “Let’s do this now. Monday’s going to be a nightmare,” she says, waggling the yellow paper in her hand.

And with that, my hope for a better, brighter tomorrow is doused like the last candle in a hurricane. As I unplug and follow her polyester-clad thighs into her office, the friction worrisome in the synthetic fabric wrapped tight around two veritable sausages stuffed full of too many Pizza Fridays and birthday cakes and ham-rich deli trays, I pray that she doesn’t catch on fire.

Because I don’t think I can muster the energy to grab an extinguisher.

Well, that was painful.

I’m on probation. One more memo, and I have to sit with a trainer. As is, I have to redo one of the training modules to “freshen up my skills” and “readjust my attitude to one of calm confidence.”

I still don’t really know what I did wrong on that call. Batman sucked back a scotch-and-Viagra cocktail. His heart doth protest too much. He died.

Why is that my fault? I didn’t force the Glenfiddich down his gullet.

The music’s so loud in my crappy car, I think one of the speakers blows out. I only turn it down when a cop pulls me over for a long-ignored busted taillight.

“But I work in dispatch,” I say. “Can’t I just get by with a warning?”

“I’d ticket my mother if she had a busted taillight. The law’s the law.”

I have no idea why it comes out of my mouth, but it does. I need someone to pick on. “You should hear what the folks in dispatch call you guys. Especially Polyester Patty,” I say as he hands me the ticket. Upon release, I punch the pedal harder than I should, risking further law’s-the-law trouble, but it’s better than saying anything else to his skeezy little moustache and too-tight motorcycle pants.

Keith’s truck is in the lot when I pull in. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t even know if I’ve made up my mind.

Mona’s words echo in my head.

Yes. I have made up my mind.

Right?

The Yorkies start their verbal assault before my keys are even in the door. My head resting against the faded paint, atop the apartment’s cracked plastic address numbers, I pause. Dueling with three five-pound wads of yappy, biting, bow-wearing fluff makes me want to rent a room elsewhere. At least I’d get some of those free bottles of shampoo and hand lotion. I could rent some chick flicks. Check on Facebook to see if Ty Stone is still single. He was always really good with his hands.

Upon entry, I’m assailed by a cloud of an unfamiliar body spray mixed with beer and farts. Keith has company. The coffee table is a cluttered smorgasbord of medical shit—tubes and tapes and bags and scissors and clampy things. They don’t hear me come in because they’re too busy arguing about one thingamajig being better than this doodad. Don’t know. Don’t care.

The giant-screen TV shows a delightfully gruesome reenactment of a partial amputation—the blunted, chewed end of some guy’s pretend femur sticking out of his work pants as he screams and fake blood squirts all over the pretend doctors and nurses. I look away. Even though I know it’s fake, it’s red and squirty and eww.

“Hey, babe,” Keith says. “You remember Joe, right? From the picnic last summer?”

I say nothing. Simply stare. Back and forth from one uninspired face to the other. When did Keith put on so much weight? Why are Joe’s pants so short? Why are they fighting about medical supplies?

Why are they both wearing stethoscopes?

“So, dude, seriously, we were on this call yesterday, and I totally thought of you. That time when we were training out in east, and we had that skinny little fucker who keeled after that hot-dog-eating contest? Remember him?” Joe nods.

“Yeah, junkie, right?”

“Totally.” Keith continues. Oh, the suspense. “So, I’ve got this new rookie for the next month—whatever his name is—and we had this guy who clearly hasn’t been eating anything except heroin hot dogs for the last bazillion years. He was coding out, so we were able to slam in two large-bore IVs, give a couple of fast liters of Ringers. Probably an overdose, but he was blue as my balls and clearly needed an airway, so my partner intubated him but it went into the esophagus—”

“No fuckin’ way.”

“I know, right? Fuckin’ rookies. So I did it myself.” Gosh, Keith, such a humble hero. “We couldn’t understand why his sats were still in the toilet even with bagging at 100 percent. We had good chest rise and end-tidal CO2 so we hot-loaded him and ran code 3 to the closest ER.”

“And?”

“He died.”

“That’s it? That’s the end of your story?” I say.

“Uhhh, yeah … he was a total tweaker. We shouldn’t even have done that much to try and save him. Waste of taxpayer money.” Keith and Joe high-five. I stare at them both.

Who are these people?

“Dude, look at
this
one,” Joe says, phone aloft. Oh, no. Show-and-tell. Keith and his buddies think it’s awesome to try and outdo one another with pictures of the goriest calls. Joe twists his wrist so I can see the screen. The victim is a young man injured in a motorcycle accident. Injured, as in his face has been scraped off and shoved up to his forehead. “Kid got stuck behind the back tire. Peeled it right off.” Bone and muscle remain. No evidence that a human face was ever there.

Eyelids close. Cannot unsee this, so don’t look.

I say the first thing that pops into my head. Chicken shit Hollie. “Keith, did you PVR that National Geographic special on otters? I set a reminder.”

“Oh, babe, I’m so sorry. I didn’t have room. New episodes of the trauma show were on Discovery Health overnight.”

“Fantastic.”

“Aw, now don’t be like that, Hol. I’m sorry. I promise I will go online and find you all the otter shows I can so you can watch to your heart’s content. My little otter girl …” He pulls back my sweatshirt sleeve and kisses my otter tattoo. Just above the bony protuberance of my wrist. Yes. Otter tattoo. Holding a banner that reads
Enhydra lutris.
Sea otter. Pretty smart tattoo for a drunk seventeen-year-old with fake ID. Except for the location. Mighty hard to hide from Dad when I chose the wrist. But … I love it.

Staring at Oliver Otter, an overwhelming realization floats upon me, like those parachutes we used in first grade. Flutters down to the ground, the air trying to escape through the single hole at the center of the multicolored nylon circle.

Ruled by mediocrity, I’ve given up. My get-up-and-go got up and went. It left without me. It didn’t even leave me a note.

I agreed to be on the party-planning committee, for God’s sake.

This is not the life I want when I see the look on Keith’s face. In fact, I can say with the cool confidence Polyester Patty so desperately wants from me: I never want to have sex with this man. Ever. Again.

I do not pass go. I do not collect $200. Instead, I scoop the remote from the end table and bring up the PVR screen. One at a time, I delete the shows. All of the shows. The trauma shows, the surgery shows, the cooking shows, even
Grey’s Anatomy
. Gone.

“Hol, what are you doing?” Delete. Delete. Delete. “Babe, don’t! Come on!” He drops the pile of packages and crap from his lap, nearly upsetting the beer bottle resting perilously close to the edge of the coffee table.
My
coffee table, covered in
his
shit. “Jesus, Hol, that’s like a month’s worth of shows!” He wrestles the remote out of my hands, moves back like I’ve just committed the ghastliest of ghastlies.

Joe is smiling. “And that is why I don’t live with a chick,” he mumbles.

“Mushroom Cap Joe—that’s what they call you, right?” I say. He squints, smile melting. Shifts his head ever so slightly. “Because of the size of your …” I circle my finger around my crotch. “Were you born like that, or was it some sort of weird industrial accident?”

“You’re a crazy bitch.”

I stand and tower over him where he sits rigid against the cushions of the remarkably ugly sofa. “I’m not the one with the gnome-sized dick, trying to get into the pants of every new trainee in the city. Everyone knows, Joe. The dispatch center is abuzz with delightful gossip, and your penis comes up more often than not. When we need a good laugh. I’m embarrassed for you, actually. Really, I am.”

Oh, damn, that felt
gooooood
.

His face turns even redder and ruddier than it was a moment prior. He guzzles what’s left of his beer and grabs his coat. “Fucking glad she’s your problem, Keith.”

The door slammed closed, Keith turns to me, eyes incredulous. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m tired. Tired of fucking around, waiting for shit to get better. Because shit doesn’t get better—it just stinks and smears and stains everything. I think I might be done with shit.” I walk over and turn off the television. “I’m going out. I’ll be back in three hours. When I return, I want you and your jump kit and the Yorkies to make like an embolism and dissolve. Gone. Poof. Vanished.”

“Come on, Hol, sit down and let’s talk about this. You’re … did something bad happen today? Did someone die? Is this about your nipples?”

I laugh under my breath. I totally forgot about my blistered nipples. I pick up one of my otter trinkets from the top of my pathetic bookshelf. “You see these two otters? These five-dollar resin animals have more of a life than I do. They have each other. Mona has Herb and they have their sons and the ducks. Shit, even Nurse Bob has his gals at work and his fishing flies and that satanic goat. Everyone has more of a life than I do.”

“Is this about getting married? Because we can totally do that if you want.”

“No, Keith, this is not about getting married.”

“Is it because I didn’t record your nature shows? Hol, come on, let’s talk about this. You’re obviously upset—”

“Yeah. I’m upset. I had a shit day. I’m tired of being bossed around. I’m tired of Les staring at me over his Black Book of Death and of Troll Lady accusing me of touching her trolls and of getting in trouble at work because I’m not doing my job the way they think I should be doing it, and I’m
really
tired of thinking about why my former best friend dumped me and how all the asshats on Facebook get to have sparkly lives while I fester in this shithole—”

“You’re just overtired. Let’s have a beer and I’ll clean up my mess. I can give you a shoulder massage. We can make lists, like the couples’ counselor told us to do, figure out what’s wrong.”

I step away from him. If he touches me—if he looks at me with sad eyes, I’ll cave. “I need a break.
We
need a break. I need you to just … go.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to be here with you.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“Hol, come on.”

“I said, I don’t want you here. Please. Keith. Take the dogs. You have three hours to figure something out. If you’re not gone when I get back, I’ll call in every favor I have left with my few remaining cop friends and make sure you’re escorted off the premises.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“But … I thought we loved each other.”

“No. We don’t.”

“Hollie—”

“I’m leaving. I’ll be back in three hours. Whatever you can’t take today, we can arrange something for your next days off. If you need me to, I can go to my dad’s to give you time to unload everything of yours from the apartment.”

“You can’t afford the rent by yourself, Hollie.”

“Still not a good-enough reason for us to live together. Goodbye, Keith.”